Lies in Red Leaves by Greg Howell

Lies in Red Leaves

A chapter in the Life of Riley

by Greg Howell

Summer came to visit.
It drifted down the river and strolled up the road.
It fell from the sky and meandered through the woods.
It'll stay for a while,
And one day,
It'll leave a note on a million falling leaves,
to say,
Winter is on its way.
Found carved on a desk in the Shattered Water University.

Blades of frost-brittle grass crunched beneath my moccasins as I ran. Early morning air as cold and sharp as chilled knives nipped at exposed skin. Each exhalation streamed back over my shoulders in a pale wreath, tangling with the mist blanketing the lake meadow. The only sounds in that frigid gray world were those of my breathing and the crackling of ice underfoot.
     Ice. Ice rimed everything that morning. Delicate white laced every blade of grass; icicles budded on skeletal branches; frost spiked from every needle of the evergreens and crackled on fallen leaves. Down along the lake's edge thin scabs of ice rang and splintered against the stony shore.
     The skies had yawned wide last night. A high, milky overcast that'd persisted throughout the day had dissipated, unveiling a bottomless well of stars that birthed the first really hard frost. So, that morning the world was still and gray and white under a pale sky: colors of chill and cold. Mist clung to the earth, settling into hollows, threading between trees and reducing the normally bright lake vista to a scene of water and ice rolling in from an obscuring murk. Filtered through that haze the first light of a new day was a pink blush on the eastern horizon.
     At that time of year, amidst the final tatters of autumn, the meadow was a less welcoming place. The greens and golds of summer; the brilliant hues of wildflowers; the aimless dances of insects; the birdsong... all those were gone. Only the old evergreen firs along the lakeshore remained unchanged. The air was cold and dry, almost like a physical slap against bare skin. Invigorating. A few laps of that field was a good way to wake yourself up in the morning and give the wetback heater time to get the shower water warmed up. And it was also a way to get away from my bodyguards: those lurking Mediators who'd nailed themselves to my shadow. For a half hour or so I could run around the periphery of a property I could call my own and they couldn't keep up.
     At first it'd been amusing to watch them try and run themselves into the ground trying to follow. When they eventually gave up on that, they reluctantly contented themselves with settling themselves somewhere they could keep an eye on me. So every morning while I ran my laps of the meadow one of those guards sat under the old oak on the sidelines and watched.
     I ran my laps, leaving a trail of footprints in the frost. Half an hour and fifteen circuits of the meadow was good for a warm up. The air was near freezing, but by the time I was done running and headed to the horizontal bar over at the old oak, I wasn't feeling it.
     The Mediator watched quietly through slit-pupil amber eyes as I knocked ice off the wooden bar and commenced my lifts.
     She wasn't human. None of them were human. Rris, that was what they called themselves. What did it mean? Well, if it meant anything that would have to be the same meaning as human, and that is 'people', because that's what they are.
     They don't look like me. They don't talk or walk like me, or even perceive the world through the same senses and psychological and sociological filters that I do, but they're toolusing beings, every bit as intelligent as me. More so in quite a few instances. I'd been in this world for... damn, it was going on three years now. Three years of immersion in a culture that was utterly inhuman, and I'd come to accept that. I'd had to. I'd come to accept them, to make friends. I'd come to think of them as normal.
     Cats, putting it bluntly. Well, at least they would have shared a distant ancestor with cats. Something that in another world might have become a lynx or bobcat. They had the same sort of general appearance as the animals back where I'd come from: the same grey and tan dappled fur; the same tufts on the mobile, pointed ears and furry cheeks. They did have tails, though. That was different. And they walked on two legs, although with strange articulation: balanced on their toes with a springing, fluid gait that could be astoundingly fast in a sprint. And there was something about the eyes, some glint or spark that showed an awareness that went beyond animal.
     Not human. And if it wasn't human, then it had to be animal.
     No. That wasn't something I thought anymore. I couldn't. I've been dunked into, submerged and utterly drowned in a culture that was older than the Anglo Americano one I'd been raised in. There were places here far, far older than even the old cities and castles of Europe. This was the Rris home, their hearth, the birthplace of their species. Their Africa. Their Olduvai. Since I'd come to this place I'd seen things that were beyond any dreams or nightmares I'd ever had. I'd seen life and death and beauty and art and passion and horror spread across a world that'd never known a human civilization. I'd started to grow accustomed to it all and was becoming able to deal with Rris without an atavistic shiver scratching up my spine.
     Most of the time.
     But that feeling wasn't reciprocated. To them I'd always be an outsider: something that wasn't normal. And I had to remember that. With each new Rris I met I had to remember that a toothy smile could draw quick offence or defensive fury; that direct eye contact was a challenge; that personal space and privacy meant very different things, and that relationships... well, I still didn't understand about relationships. Not really understand. That would come later. It all meant that to every new Rris I met I was the exotic, strange, frightening, and unpredictable beast that talked.
     I felt that then, as I chinned the bar again and again. She was watching me. I could see her out of the corner of my eye, staring at me with her head cocked to one side. Not a casual observation, but staring as you might watch an exotic animal in a zoo. As she'd done every morning. And like every morning I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore her as I ignored the still-weird sensations in what remained of the small finger of my left hand, concentrating on the task at hand until my muscles felt they'd had enough.
     I dropped down from the bar, breathing hard and rolling my shoulders. I'd done enough for that morning, and in the frigid air I could already feel ice crystallizing in my beard and hair. As I set off back to the house there was a blur of movement as Jenes'ahn fell into place just behind my right shoulder. My moccasins crunched on the frost: her footsteps were silent.
     "Is that normal?" she asked after a few seconds.
     "Huhn? What?" I stopped and looked around at her. Standing, the top of her head came up to my shoulders, which made her a little taller than the average Rris. Her tufted ears, however, added another six odd centimeters to her height. In the icy morning her breath wreathed her muzzle in coils as white as her pointed teeth. Her eyes were the honey amber of aged oak, the pupils distinctly elongated. She was wearing the dark padded jerkin and loose breeches that suited the Mediators as an informal uniform and that was all. With her winter fur growing in thick and shaggy it was all she needed. And she was armed beyond her teeth: a couple of wheel lock pistols were tucked into a bandolier and a blade like an oversized Bowie blade was sheathed at her belt and there were sharp claws at finger and toe-tips.
     "You," she told me, gesturing. "There's smoke coming off you."
     What? I looked down and she was right — sort of. In the chill air a fine mist was boiling off the bare skin of my arms and from under my ratty t-shirt. "It's just cold out," I said. "No problem."
     She frowned. "I thought you didn't like cold."
     "For a short time it's okay," I said. "That was just short enough. Now, I need a hot wash."
     Jenes'ahn. One of the pair of Mediators assigned to watch me. She, along with her partner, Rohinia, had been ordered by the Mediator Guild to shadow me. Not exactly as bodyguards either: They were as much to keep me away from the world as they were to protect me. Which was causing a lot of friction all around as affected parties chafed under the restrictions the Guild had levied.
     Their civilization was at a stage that was roughly equivalent to late eighteenth century Europe. Give or take in certain areas. They were entering the industrial age; steam power was making inroads at replacing muscle power; machines replacing ancient animal-powered carts; hissing gas lamps replacing dim torches. I'd come into this age from a world well into the information age, where entire factories were starting to be replaced with self-contained manufacturing and fabrication units and tailored, on-demand and JIT production replacing scattershot mass distribution. In my ignorance and human chauvinism I'd thought that I'd be able to do wonderful things for them; to help them with new technology and ideas. My hosts were only too happy to take advantage of this, to take what I offered and more if they could. And the problems only started there.
     The Rris were divided into nations, their inhabited civilized world covering the northern and eastern parts of what I'd known as North America. I was a guest of one of these states. As word spread, other countries weren't so happy to hear about this windfall that'd befallen the country of Land-of-Water. As things had developed jealousies were aroused, old enmities stirred and demands made and I started to see how short-term solutions seemed to breed swarms of new longer-term problems. Some small, some not so.
     None of that escaped the notice of the Mediator Guild. In fact it infected them as well, causing a schism to rip through the almost-untouchable Guild. Two factions fell into a nasty internal squabble for power, control over new technology, and control over the different Rris governments, all the while trying to keep the incident quiet from the outside. There were attempts on my life, abductions and actual infighting amongst Guild factions. Things became quite unpleasant before the situation was... resolved. And one of the points the Guild solution had pivoted upon was to ensure none of the Rris countries had sole and unfettered access to me. So to that end that pair were assigned to me, that Jenes'ahn and Rohinia, as much censors as bodyguards.
     It had all been accomplished in a very convoluted manner that kept everything in-house and drove home yet again just how... inhuman their thought process and moral structure could be. They'd lied to me. They'd tricked me and manipulated me and finally blackmailed me into cooperating with their little games. They'd used me and they'd used someone I... cared very deeply about.
     I had no love for the Mediator Guild.
     I sighed a white cloud as I jogged back across the white-frosted meadow with my armed shadow close behind. Since that time in Open Fields there was one of them there all the time. Every time I spoke to another Rris they were there, making sure I didn't give away anything I shouldn't. And it was becoming increasingly obvious just how ridiculous that was. You couldn't take back an idea. I felt my jaw muscles clench just thinking about it as I headed home.
     Home. Even here, in this weird world, that was what I'd come to think of it as. In the past few years I'd paid a lot in blood, sweat and tears, but I'd been able to take a part of this place and make it into something that I could at least consider mine. A big, lakefront property would have been far beyond my means back home. Here, that wasn't a problem. It was almost the reverse. My hosts had reimbursed me for my work. It was valuable to them, so they paid appropriately and generously. I had money, a lot of it, but it wasn't that much use to me. I couldn't spend it on techtoys like cars or entertainment systems or even go out on the town and spend it there. So instead, I spent it on things that had some concrete value here: artworks, sculpture, books, and — of course — the house.
     The place was a mansion — impressive and expansive. Originally it'd been built by a wealthy individual who used the handy lake access to supplement his legitimate trading ventures with some smuggling. Or so had been insinuated. It'd had several other owners since then and had grown with their various tastes and desires. I'm not sure if the architectural style could be slotted into any sort of category. It'd started out as something that would have been, I think, close to Victorian: perhaps a Queen Anne style in shingles and fretwork and then modified by someone with an inhuman eye and aesthetic. Construction was predominantly wood around a forest of stone chimneys. There were gables and turrets and windows in odd places, giving the impression that the whole building had been added to at whim as time had passed; as if it'd grown into its surrounds. It had been somewhat dilapidated when I'd acquired it and required a lot of work, but money hadn't been a problem.
     Weatherboard walls that had been grey and warped were now as white as the frost in the trees around them. Dark slate shingled roofs and porches glittered with ice while trim painted in brighter greens and oranges stood out like butterflies on clean linen. And I'd had plenty of changes made beyond simple cosmetic renovations: lintels had been raised to heights that meant I'd stop concussing myself when walking through a doorway; central heating and water heating had been installed, there was revolutionary wool insulation in the walls, ceiling and under the floor; and the big expanses of clear, gleaming sheet glass in some of the new windows was the first of its kind in Shattered Water. A very expensive gift from the Guild of Glassmakers in the foreign capitol of Open Fields.
     The panes of the living room door, however, were old beveled glass, made the laborious traditional way: blown and spun and flattened and cut and polished by hand. Each one expensive and very beautiful. Now they were laced with fronds of white frost curling from the edges of every pane. As I stepped up onto the verandah the doors swung open, a dark Rris standing straight and proud waiting inside.
     "Sir," Tich greeted me as usual. "Your running was enjoyable?"
     "Very refreshing," I replied.
     She ducked her head as I passed by. "Very good, sir. Breakfast will be ready when you've finished your rain."
     "Thank you, Tich," I said as she waited for the Mediator to enter and then closed the door behind her.
     Tich. Actually Tichirik, but I found the contraction less of a mouthful and she kept her objections to herself. She was a middle-aged, russet furred Rris who carried herself with an upright, almost haughty carriage and probably wouldn't have looked out of place in an old English manor house. She was also the major domo; a sort of glorified butler who kept everything in the household ticking over. From the maids to the cook and gardeners, she made sure the staff did their jobs smoothly, efficiently and unobtrusively. She was very good at her job. She was probably a spy.
     I would have been more surprised if she weren't. I didn't doubt that the government of Land-of-Water wanted to keep an eye on me and everyone who worked under this roof was certainly — if not already on Palace payrolls — carefully vetted by them. Tich had been responsible for hiring most of them; she saw everything that went on in the house and dealt with me every day. For her not to be reporting to someone in the government was almost inconceivable. But she was good at her job, and for some reason her dignity didn't come across as the holier-than-thou bearing of the Mediators, especially when it came dealing with my... idiosyncrasies.
     Rain. Huh. That was an accurate translation from their language to English. They didn't have a word for shower, the bathroom kind. They weren't very popular amongst Rris. Baths yes; falling water, no. But hot falling water was what I needed to wash frozen sweat away. As I passed through my bedroom the lump under the sheets stirred, making a semi-conscious snrking sound, but still didn't sound entirely alive. I let it lay as I headed through to the ensuite and set the shower running.
     The water had had time to heat up so I could enjoy a hot wash. It doesn't sound like much, but it was a luxury I'd learned not to take for granted. When I'd first come here and many times since then I'd had to make do with a few inches of lukewarm water in a basin, a rag of cloth and a lot of goosebumps. Hot, running water on-tap was something to treasure.
     How had I come here? I don't know. To make a long, confusing story short and confusing, I was home and then I was here. That's all I know. I'd been on vacation, getting away from the warm glow of my cubicle and workstation to go hiking in Vermont. I'd been going to meet Jackie. She was... we were... Hell, what we'd been is long in the past now, relegated to dusty memory and some scabbed emotions that I don't like to prod. What we'd been was all consigned to history after that day walking in the countryside and I remember there was a bright flash of what might have been lightning from a clear sky and when I woke up I was... elsewhere. My maps were wrong, there was no phone or GPS coverage, no roads or power lines or distant contrails, just a lot of wilderness. I was... nowhere. I was lost. I was here.
     Events progressed from there. Shenanigans and goings-on ensued. And whenever I've had the chance I've been looking for an answer, some sort of precedent or stories in Rris archives and histories about something like myself. To date there's been nothing but mistakes and errors. No myths though — Rris don't work like that.
     That was done, that was gone. At that moment I had a roof and warm water. There was time to wash, dress and be back downstairs for breakfast in the parlor. Hmmm, breakfast:
     Coffee and bacon and eggs and waffles with maple syrup. Well, they would have been nice, but... no bacon here. No pigs. No coffee. No chickens either. Maple syrup, now they did have that, although it was an expensive import from the north. Actually, a lot of the stuff I took for granted was — out of season fruit was either grown in local conservatories and greenhouses or shipped frozen in ice. Both options wincingly expensive. So I sat on a cushion at the table in the living room breakfasting on smoked bison strips, tomatoes and oranges and oatmeal cakes with syrup. Not a typical Rris breakfast; they do like some flavor and variety in their meals so they use spices and flora, but they do tend toward the carnivore side of the omnivore spectrum.
     "Did they happen to mention what it's about?" a voice asked. The figure in the living-room doorway blinked at me, yawned and stretched and then scratched at her belly. Her fur was still a tangled mass of spikes, matted where she'd been sleeping on it and tufted out elsewhere; a full-body bed-head that she wore utterly unselfconsciously. Really, they couldn't be naked just by being unclothed. It was a concept they found absurd and something I had to get accustomed to.
     "Not a word," I said.
     "Huhnnn!" she rumbled, an exhalation that was not quite a cough and not quite a growl.
     Thoughtful. Or hungry. That seemed more likely as she seated herself on one of the artfully tooled leather cushions at the low table, lifting the cover on the other platter and leaning over to sniff at the strips of meat there. There was a proper dining room, complete with a huge, polished airfield of a table, but I only ever used that on formal occasions — when hosting guests, and that was a once a blue moon affair.
     "It's just a meeting," I shrugged. "It's early, but that doesn't have to mean anything."
     She leveled both amber eyes at me in an unmistakable are-you-serious sort of expression before pointedly chomping down on a string of half-raw flesh.
     "Yeah," I sighed. "I know, I know: It's not the usual time and they haven't asked me to bring my notebook. I guess that means it's an unusual meeting."
     Her tall, tufted ears twitched. "Guild?"
     I grimaced. "Don't think so. They want me at the Palace. If it was a Guild matter they wouldn't do anything there. Actually, I don't think they'd even wait until morning."
     She chittered amusement and bolted another mouthful. "Well, whatever it is, you're going to find out soon enough. The carriage is waiting out front." I hissed exasperation and clambered to my feet, stretched. "Then I suppose I'd better not keep them waiting, since they went to the trouble of getting me up early and everything."
     Chihirae snorted. "You take care," she told me.
     As I passed behind her I stopped, then crouched, embraced her; laid my chin on her shoulder as I hugged her. For a split moment she flinched, tensing for a heartbeat before relaxing again with a sigh and sagging of muscles that I could feel and rubbing her furry cheek against mine. For several seconds I held her and neither of us said anything, not a word out loud. Sometimes it was the only way we could really say what we needed to. Talking just confused things.
     When I stepped out the front door the first direct sun was stroking across the frosted grass of the lake meadow, burning away the early mist. Jenes'ahn was waiting on the porch, standing in the chill air with her gray greatcoat hanging around her as she watched me with steady amber eyes. I shrugged into my own coat — a big, brown, heavy-duty leather duster that I'd had custom-made locally — and clomped down the front steps to the gravel of the drive, aware of the Mediator falling in behind me. The coach waiting on the loop of the driveway was one of the new ones, built since I'd arrived. It still had elk in the traceries and the wheels were iron rimmed with wooden spokes and the builders hadn't scrimped on the decorative rococo trim, but now there were working shock absorbers and better brakes and the seats were actually comfortable. The half-dozen Rris guards flanking it were all on elkback, the soldiers' armor gleaming under the clear sky
     "Morning, Ha'rish," I called to the Rris driver up on his bench.
     "Sir."
     "The palace this morning?"
     "Yes, sir," he rumbled. Not a man of many words, was Ha'rish. I nodded to the guard holding the door and clambered up into the coach. The whole thing rocked on its springs, then again as Jenes'ahn hopped up behind. She settled herself opposite me and the door closed, guards called out, the coach lurched and then started off with a grinding of iron-bound wheels on gravel. I leaned back and watched the frosty gardens passing by.
     Chihirae. She was the first Rris I'd actually met; actually talked to. It'd been some distance from the city of Shattered Water, off to the east in a sleepy little backwoods town called Westwater in an area I'd known as Vermont. It'd been winter. It'd been freezing cold.
     I'd been hungry, seriously injured, desperate, and hunted by the locals. She'd helped me. Even though she'd been the one who'd shot me and had been under pressure from other townspeople to hand me over to the authorities, she was the one who took me in; the one who defended me, who taught me a little bit about her world. And that was a lot for her. It was a hell of a lot. It wasn't as if she had much in the first place, but then she had to look after me and feed me and stand up for me and teach me. It meant altercations with her clients and her employers; it meant disruptions to her life. And, inevitably, it meant she was dragged down into the trouble that brewed up around me.
     She was the first Rris I'd come to think of as a person, then a friend. Then, later, as something much more. We were lovers. Or rather, I was hers. She couldn't. I mean: they can't. Rris can't feel love; not that surge of chemicals that a human would interpret as love. Oh, they have affections and compassion and loyalty and fondness and adoration, but I've found the hard way that trying to assign precise human analogs to their moods is simply asking for trouble. And that hurt as much as any of the outward scars I carried.
     Because I loved her. Because I understood that she couldn't reciprocate. Because I knew that staying with me would be a dead-end for her and that the best thing she could do was to get on with her life. Because, I knew all that and yet I still wanted her to stay. Wanted it more than anything. How long was it going to last?
     It was something I didn't want to think about and every time the worry crept forward I suppressed it again, dealing with matters of the moment rather than that uncomfortable reality. That was something for future me to deal with, the poor bastard. At that time the pressing issue was the meeting that morning. It wasn't like the usual interview with a Guild representative or merchant, but it wasn't dissimilar from other meetings I'd had in the past. The haste of the thing carried the air of some kind of time constraint, along with perhaps a whiff of politics. That wasn't surprising, in fact it was similar to something that'd happened before. If that were the case, then I had an idea of what it could be. The next question would be where and when.
     Bare branches arched overhead as we passed along the drive, clattering along through the light and dark fractures of shadows cast by the interlacing fingers of denuded oaks. The sound of iron-rimmed wheels changed as we passed through the short echoing tunnel beneath the gatehouse, rumbling and grating over time-worn flagstones. Guards watched us leave. They were well-trained and unobtrusive, but they were there. They were mainly to keep unwanted visitors out. Well, that was the story that seemed to be making the rounds. I wasn't a prisoner. Not exactly. After all: where would I go?
     I watched the now-familiar neighborhood scroll past, everything moving at a pace so much slower than it would have back home. The coach could make maybe thirty kilometers an hour with the elk at full a full, rattling gallop, and we weren't anywhere near that. At about seven kilometers an hour there was plenty of time to watch the world: Narrow lanes with stone walls and high hedges; frost steaming away from a thick mass of ivy climbing over an ancient wall with a little wooden gate in it; a boulevard flanked by huge old trees and big estates with buildings that looked like they'd grown there, hidden away in carefully tended pockets of wilderness.
     As we headed north those estates became smaller, more condensed. Expansive grounds became smaller grounds, turned to gardens and compounds. While grounds shrank, buildings also changed. Expensive cut stone and elaborate designs turned to brick and whitewashed plaster. Residences and other places of occupancy became more introverted. Where there'd been outward-looking windows in the large estates there were blank walls or much smaller slits. The fa&ccdeil;ades turned inwards, towards the atriums I knew were in the center of the buildings, along with the courtyards and the gardens and fountains and stables and whatever else the occupants may require.
     We passed through changing strata of buildings and districts, like moving through the rings in a tree. There were residential districts and commercial districts and stockyards and plazas and squares used for more small outdoor markets. Others areas were already nucleating the growing centers of industrialization: warehouses and factories made of brick here and there, more than a few spilling smoke from boilers for the big fixed steam plants that powered workshops. Ancillary industries nestled around them, transferring goods around like the cells in a blood stream as they fed the new demands. Once we clattered noisily and uncomfortably over lines of rickety rail tracks angled off toward the river.
     Shattered Water had grown along the north-eastern shores of a body of water I'd known as Lake Eerie, at a river mouth a little south of where the city of Buffalo, New York had stood. From a civic-design view the city was a hodgepodge mixture of planning and spontaneous growth, with almost none of the practical grid layout I was familiar with. Like old European cities it'd grown organically there, responding to the needs of the times and desires of its citizens. There were attempts at civic engineering, with open plazas and squares dotted throughout the city and wide avenues and main streets that radiated out from those. Smaller radial roads joined those thoroughfares, but in between those was still a bewildering maze of alleyways and side streets built with no single end in mind. All over the city those arrangements laid like a series of interlocking spider webs. I imagined that seen from the air it would all look like multiple fractures in a stone-cracked windshield: thousands of intersecting lines radiating from a dozen plaza-points, shattering the glass into countless wedge-shaped shards bounded by the interstices between them.
     Over the centuries walls had been erected around the heart of the city. Not just once, but time and again — each further out and encompassing more territory like the rings of a lopsided tree. The outermost fortifications were the newest, built since the advent of gunpowder weapons in this world but still over a hundred years old. Those were more a line of squat, fortified berms and moats with gatehouses at tactical locations rather than a traditional curtain wall of stones and mortar. The older fortifications — what was left of them — supplanted by the new line of defense had been walls of the more traditional sort. Dotted through the city like crumbling old teeth were remains of gatehouses and barbicans and towers and tumbled stretches of wall and masonry, ransacked and cannibalized for raw building material or for the land they occupied. The walls defined a strata of a sort: the oldest within and the newer further out. The central part of the city was crowded, the real estate space was valuable. As in old European cities, buildings were squeezed in wherever they would fit. I'd seen some of the older corners of the inner city where alleyways were just tunnels under structures that'd been built wedged between two existing buildings. There were houses whose upper stories had been extended out so far their rooflines butted against the residence across the street and you could open an upper window and shake hands with someone living opposite. Sometimes they went all the way and connected the upper floors, covering the street below.
     And despite that, it was expensive. If you wanted to be anyone, you needed to be where it was all happening. So the big guilds and the wealthy merchants had their frontages around the squares and along the boulevards. Back streets were tenanted by craftsmen and smaller businessmen, rows of small shops with their shingles decorated with pictures of their wares for the illiterate. Stables and smithies and coopers and a city's worth of craftsmen wedged in wherever they could between the town-houses and apartments and atrium-courts.
     Beyond the walls, out where buildings had overflowed those limiting confines, things spread out somewhere. The businesses there were more were devoted to larger manufacturing and commerce and industry. Stables and slaughter houses and tanneries and lumber yards and distilleries and granaries and more. Industries that needed space, inching out to the countryside and along the river and lakeshore. The river snaked eastwards through the landscapes of the southern districts; through the ridges and peaks of rooftops and chimney pots; spiked with wharves and jetties; spanned by several bridges; bowing inside the city walls, in and then out again.
     Past the last bridge, just before the river mouth and the breakwaters there, both banks were crowded with larger docks and wharves, shipyards, rows of warehouses and the skeletal thickets of masts and spars of ships.
     There was a change in the tenor of the ride. Clattering iron-bound wheels on cobbles turned to a smoother hollow rumble as the carriage trundled over the bridge's icy flagstones. I looked out through condensation frosting on the glass at a bare forest of masts along the riverside wharves. A few late vessels were setting out, heading down the river toward the lake. Far more were moored or beached or hauled up on trusses for winter maintenance. It was prudent: the growing ice floes and unpredictable weather at this time of year made venturing out a risky prospect for the smaller boats. Those headed out must've had a good reason.
     It was barely after dawn, but the people here didn't waste the light. Rris were off to work and the morning markets were in full swing, so the streets we travelled along were already busy. The main thoroughfares were broad and open and what vehicular traffic there was travelled smoothly, but the smaller side streets were packed with enormous numbers of furry, multicolored bodies going about their business. Buildings fronting the main avenues were expensive and large, some even several stories in height. There were Guild halls constructed from finely cut stone and merchant offices in brick and terracotta tile and stores with panes of glass fronting them. And there was noise: the susurrus and snarl of Rris voices and metal wheels on stone and animals. There were smells: Rris bodies and beasts and burning wood and coal and tanning leather and cooking and manure and sewers and rotting things. Steam and smoke wreathed the air around brightly colored stalls where milling Rris of every description sought foodstuffs and breakfast. Workers from workshops and crafthouses and new factories and old Guildhalls bought the Rris versions of tacos and kebabs and pies and jerky; servants collected the morning's bread and household food, carrying baskets and haggling loudly over the best cuts. It was a busy, cosmopolitan scene.
     Straight from a surrealist's fever-dreams.
     Over at a stall a customer bared teeth at a merchant in a broadly unhappy grin. A gaggle of gangly fuzzy adolescents caromed through the crowd, chased by snarls from those they jostled. Smoke rose from a tray of glowing coals over which a dealer was roasting what looked like spits of small birds. Another vendor crying his ware, carrying his handmade pots and pans slung from straps hung over his shoulders. Stevedores hauling crates and barrels through the crowds. A busker playing something like the bastard son of a violin and balalyka, and losing. Rris in bright colors riding on elkback. Rris walking and talking. Rris running and shouting.
     It was one of those scenes that twinged something inside me, something at the back of my mind that just didn't want to accept what it was seeing. I took a deep breath and leaned back in the leather seat, away from the window, feeling my eyes wobbling in their sockets. Three years of being exposed to it, of living it, and it still happened.
     Across the cab from me, Jenes'ahn slouched back in her own seat and watched me without saying a word.
     We headed north, following the thoroughfares slicing through the city. They cut through the dense intramuros section of the old city central, back out through the walls to where once again the city opened up. The Rocks, they called that more exclusive area where the estates and the money were old and dug in. The Rocks, or the Nipple, depending on how much silver cutlery you had in your mouth at birth. It was established money in this part of town. True, the house I'd bought was also in an exclusive sort of area, but it was in an area built up by much newer money; the sort of money that might come and go. I'd gathered there'd been politics that'd influenced my purchase — that'd restricted just what property had been available for my purchase — but I hadn't known the details at the time. I'd been advised by people I'd learned to listen to that it be better if I'd settled where I had.
     The local residents association hadn't wanted their property values to take a hit by having the local monster living next door, I guessed.
     Beyond the Rocks lay the Palace and its grounds. There wasn't much room for anything else. The entire palace complex covered a huge swathe of land: from the lakeside to a distance of over fifteen kilometers inland was royal parklands. As we rattled down the boulevard toward the lake, I could see the black tines of the wrought-iron fence surrounding those grounds paralleling us. Beyond them the trees of the tended wilderness around the palace were barren and grey and motionless, waiting for winter.
     The guards at the gate gave the carriage a cursory look over before passing us through. I was a one-of-a-kind sight with an appointment. And Jenes'ahn... well, Mediators tend to go where they please. Beyond the gate the drive meandered a long way into the grounds. As with all Rris landscaping works they were carefully tended, they just didn't look it. Meadows and gardens were seas of knee-high wild grasses and flowers; woods were wildernesses of trees and undergrowth, appearing as deep and wild as any dark, heartland forest. Save for the places where you looked twice and realized the entire thing was sculpted; the places where trails and steps wound through the trunks, where random standing stones or cairns framed a scene, where branches intertwined and mimicked ceilings or figures or other things.
     It all spoke to something in the Rris psyche. To mine it whispered things that sent frissons of unease up and down my spine.
     For several minutes we travelled along a carpet of fallen leaves, through bare trees under an icy blue sky, and then the palace was in front of us.
     My breath condensed into lingering clouds as I stepped down from the carriage and looked up at the edifice before me. Three stories of pale stone and glass gleaming in the early sun; an aged roof flashing copper and green amongst the last fading colors of autumn; hundreds of windows marching in neatly spaced rows away to the wings east and west; carvings of stylized greenery and stone Rris decorated fanciful cornices. And the open doors in front of me were huge oak things, the ornate irons bands curling across them as much for decoration as reinforcement.
     Pairs of guards stood sentry at the doors and in the hall beyond. Their uniforms were brightly colored, but they weren't wearing unnecessary frills: their metal cuirasses and weapons gleamed with care and polish. They were there for practical reasons, not decoration. I'd had experience with intruders in the Palace before and since then security had been stepped up a bit.
     As soon as we walked into the cavernous antechamber a Rris in an expensive-looking tunic was hurrying across the tiled floor toward us. "Sir. Constable," the glorified greeter bowed to me and Jenes'ahn. His ears didn't go back, I noticed. Perhaps he'd encountered me before. "You are expected. Please, if you would be so good as to follow me."
     The Palace in Shattered Water wasn't just a residence for royalty, it was a symbol, a statement of prosperity and power and probably more than a few concepts that simply didn't fit properly into my mind. Like Versailles in another world, it showed that here was the wealth and the ability and the skills to build something that was awe-inspiring and beautiful and really not entirely necessary. That entry hall was over three stories tall, with an inlaid floor of cold marble, walls of spectacularly grained wooden panels hung with glittering tapestries and a high, vaulted ceiling painted in a spectacular fresco. The miniature figures standing around the place were actually visitors transiting the hall, reduced to the scale of dolls by the scale of their surroundings. And at that moment a lot of them were motionless because they'd stopped to stare at me. Damn tourists.
     Our guide led the way through halls and corridors and rooms filled with color and expensive splendor. Winter sunlight streamed in through windows of hand-polished glass and took some of the chill out of the air even as it gleamed on metal and cut stone. There were artworks everywhere: paintings and sculptures and carvings and stranger things created by alien artisans for alien aesthetics and tastes and senses. Some of the works were beautiful, while others were things I might not have ordinarily recognized as art — scents on weather-bleached bits of wood, broken stones from ancient walls, wind chimes that rang with sounds I couldn't hear, tapestries of disquietingly familiar hides... all those and stranger things.
     Some of the artworks — the paintings in particular — carried airs of something not quite right; something almost imperceptibly askew. Nothing obvious, just a feeling that was difficult to define. Colors, maybe: the palettes appeared limited to my eyes. Proportions, perhaps: they did prefer portrait format over landscape even for pictures any human would've painted in landscape. I think of that and I think of their slit-pupiled eyes and I wonder if there's a connection.
     So we walked through the majestic halls decorated with artworks any museum would give their eye teeth for; along corridors beneath the eyes of cracked and faded portraits of ancient Rris; crossed elaborate parquet floors of inlaid wood or stone under baroque ceilings flourished with bas reliefs and gilt; passed through doorways with lintels decorated with carved vines of such delicacy that light diffused through them as it might real leaves.
     Palace guards and servants going about their daily business had something to stare at as we passed by. That was one of the reasons that, even though I knew the way through the Palace, I wasn't allowed anywhere without an escort: there was always the chance we'd encounter someone who wasn't familiar with me and might get a little excited. One of the reasons anyway.
     Our destination was an antechamber in the west wing. There were another set of doors with guards. There was a typical Rris work desk, set low, about knee-high. There were stacks of paperwork spread out across the blue-leather blotter on the desk. There were polished wooden shelves and pigeonholes laden with books and scrolls around the walls. There was a Kh'hitch ah Ki.
     Kh'hitch was personal secretary to the King of Land-of-Water and he was one of the largest Rris I'd met, mostly around the waistline. Upon meeting him I was put in mind of an overstuffed furry cushion that'd been dressed by a mad, color-blind tailor. His penchant for blousy frills on his cloths didn't do anything to lessen the impact, nor did the fact he dyed patches of his fur in fanciful red and green decorative swirls. I wondered if it was a show, some sort of misdirection. On first impressions he came across as a foppish butterball, but after you'd dealt with him a few times you learned there was something more substantial under that exterior. There was good reason he was the King's personal aide.
     When we entered the room he was busy with paperwork. For a few ticks we stood while his fountain pen scritchscratched over the paper, the nib dancing from one position to another on the page as he modified tense or emphasis here, a pronoun or verb there; smoothly applying all those seemingly-arbitrary rules that were making anything approaching fluency in their written language so difficult for me. Jenes'ahn put up with that reception for all of three seconds before stepping up to the desk and looming over the aide.
     "A patient moment please, constable," Kh'hitch said quietly before she could open her mouth. He scratched a few more characters, set his pen aside and carefully blotted the sheet. The whole little ceremony was probably an act, telling her that he was going to deal with her in his own time, thank you very much. She was probably quite aware of that as well because she went stock still, adopting that expressionless mask as he looked up at her. "Constable," he nodded. "And ah Rye'e," he butchered my name. "Good of you to come."
     "Well, since you went to all the trouble of inviting us," I shrugged. "How could we refuse?"
     If he'd been human he might have arched an eyebrow. "Quite," he said.
     "What is this about?" Jenes'ahn asked. "There wasn't a meeting scheduled for today."
     Kh'hitch sat back, steepling his fingers on the desk before him. "It's regarding a matter his Highness wishes to discuss with you personally. It wasn't scheduled earlier because, simply, the matter has been simmering and only just bubbled to the surface."
     "Sounds tasty," I offered. "This is important, I gather, or are we exchanging recipes?"
     That look again. "It is a serious matter, Mikah. His Highness called you here to discuss what we know and what will likely be expected of you. The particulars are still to be confirmed."
     I glanced sidelong at Jenes'ahn. "You really don't know what's going on here?"
     She snorted and a corner of her mouth fleered back. "It's involving you so it could be any of a forest of possibilities. I would hear this from the King himself."
     "A," Kh'hitch agreed and levered himself to his feet. "Stay a moment. I will announce you."
     The double doors across the room were tall, narrow, made of some dark wood with brass latches. Kh'hitch scratched at the plate, then opened one half of the pair and stepped in. I could hear the indistinct echoes of voices. The guards posted at the door watched us; watched me, rather. They were enough to make sure visitors didn't go poking around the Secretary's office; reading his mail and drawing mustaches on the paintings, things like that. We had a few minutes wait before the door opened again and the Secretary returned. "He will see you now."
     The King of Land-of-Water had an office I'd always considered... odd. It was a huge, white room. Everything was marble: cold, white marble, from the floor to the columns climbing and arching out to the ceiling decorated with white bass reliefs. Sunlight gleamed in through floor-to-ceiling latticed windows, the nets of small square lights in their mullions catching rainbows in the glazing. Over in one corner of the white, chill room was a patch of burgundy carpet and on that was a desk. Not a giant extravagance of some polished wood, but a low, modest-sized item of seasoned, well-used furniture where Hirht ah Chihiski did whatever paperwork was important enough to filter through the ranks of secretaries and clerks to meet his eyes.
     I gathered that those days quite a bit of that sort of material involved me.
     At the edge of that little island of color and carpet we stopped. The Rris King was reading a document of some kind and as we arrived he raised a single finger to stall us until he finished the page. Then he hissed a low sigh and set the page down on the desk. There was a decanter of the boiled water that I preferred there, I noticed, along with three glasses.
     "Mikah. Constable," Hirht greeted us. "Good of you to come. You are doing well this morning? Still running, I hear."
     "Yes, sir," I said. I wondered just how many little birds brought him these snippets of information.
     "It's not too cold for you these mornings?"
     "Running does tend to warm one up. It's quite... refreshing"
     He blinked and apparently decided not to pursue incomprehensible alien interests any further. "You'll be wondering what this is about."
     "A trip to Bluebetter this time?" I asked. "A little late in the year, isn't it?"
     This time there was a twitch of his muzzle. "You told him something, Constable?"
     "Not I, sir," Jenes'ahn said, also looking askance at me.
     I shrugged. "The situation is just like last time. And this time Bluebetter would be a good guess." Also, my grasp of their written grammar was terrible, but I could read some individual words well enough. And from further away than Rris suspected.
     One of his ears twitched. "Hurhn, a good guess then," he rumbled thoughtfully. "Yes. Bluebetter. They have been getting more vocal since your visit to Open Fields. Your last meeting with ah Thes'ita was interrupted."
     Oh, yeah. I remembered. I felt my jaw twitch.
     "At the time I believe he considered it an annoyance, but since then you and your changes have become more of a political item. He isn't pleased that he missed out on an opportunity like that and their requests for another meeting have become considerably louder. Since your Open Fields excursion they've been yowling for recompense. In fact they've become quite insistent."
     "More so than all the others?" I asked.
     Hirht considered that for a moment. Just a moment. "Louder, perhaps. And they are a country with which we have old, well-established treaties and agreements. We feel that in the interests of these relationships we should accommodate their requests."
     "The Guild has been notified about this?" Jenes'ahn asked.
     "You have been now," Hirht replied. "This is official notification. Documents have been dispatched to the hall."
     Jenes'ahn's muzzle rumpled a fraction. "You make this known just now?"
     "Yes," Hirht retorted. "We have only just finalized the details. Gaining the approval of other parties, including — I might add — your own Guild, has not been the easiest of trails. To broker an agreement that everyone favored would have taken the rest of our lives. Perhaps with amazing devices that Mikah's people know of that can let people in different provinces talk without pause we could do something in a reasonable time. As it stands, we don't have a solution that pleases everyone, merely one that angers the fewest." He hissed softly and tipped his head slightly as he regarded the Mediator and me.
     "We have chased what presented itself," he said simply.
     "Huhn," the Mediator coughed and looked at me again. "What are your intentions?"
     "They are within guides laid by the Guild: Mikah will travel to Red Leaves, along with a Land-of-Water escort and whomever the Guild sees fit to send. Ah Ties will be accompanying you, as will aesh Smither as official and commercial proxies, along with a representative from the University. This is intended to be mostly a goodwill visit, but you will be expected to visit various institutions and industries. There will certainly be requests for information and recommendations for various industries. The Guild will be present to ensure that their [something] on his knowledge is not exploited."
     His breath was frosting into white clouds in the chill. I glanced at the windows, at the grey branches out there. "When is this supposed to happen?"
     "As soon as possible," Hirht replied. "For the time being, the weather makes travel by unpaved road impractical and winter proper will block shipping routes. We wait for the first snows: when the roads freeze they'll be passable again."
     I thought back to my lessons, to my geography of this world and where Red Leaves was. It'd be round about where Wilmington was back home; down between what I'd known as Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. That was... what, seven hundred kilometers? As the crow flies. And we wouldn't be flying. We'd be slogging along at maybe forty kilometers a day, if we were lucky, through some pretty mountainous countryside. In winter.
     "Sir," I ventured. "That far... in winter? It will take weeks to get there."
     Hirht's ears flicked. "Mikah, we're aware you don't like the cold. Precautions will be taken."
     It wasn't a question of not liking it, it was a question of freezing to death in it. I had done it before, however. My journey from Lying Scales to Shattered Water had been through a frozen winter and I'd survived it. And, actually, a sleigh over snow is a good deal more comfortable than a wagon jolting through ruts on cart tracks. And this was all political and messy so it wasn't going to be fun, but it was going to happen. I sighed and nodded.
     "Could I get some of my possessions back from whomever is poking at them? My tent and some other things?"
     "They are necessary?"
     "They might make the going easier."
     "I'll see to it," he said. "What about a personal staff. Are there any you wish to take with you? What about the teacher? Would things be easier with her along?"
     I flinched. That wasn't a question I'd been expecting. "I... I think that would be entirely up to her," I hedged. She had commitments, which I fully realized could suddenly vanish at the whims of my hosts if her wishes conflicted with their own. "I will have to ask her."
     Hirht didn't blink. "Quite," he said. "She has teaching obligations. Substitutes can be arranged if required."
     "Thank you, sir."
     "Security?" Jenes'ahn asked.
     "Several full attachments of troops," Hirht replied. "With the... attentions that Mikah seems to draw to himself we feel that we should overstock our larders in that regard. A party of outriders will lead a day ahead and ensure that lodgings en-route are available and secure. At the border a contingent of Bluebetter troops will join them to escort them for the rest of the journey."
     Jenes'ahn looked at me and combed a sharp little claw through a cheek tuft, as though thinking about something. "There has been some unrest in that country," she said.
     "I am aware of that," Hirht said. "While we are on good terms with the government, their internal affairs are not a matter with which we wish to concern ourselves. They would also prefer we stay clear."
     Yeah. And a not-inconsiderable amount of Land-of-Water's copper, hemp and coal came from Bluebetter, all of which were in increasing demand by the factories and mills. Land-of-Water was being quite polite. In their position, with antsy petitioners banging on their door, it was probably the best stance to take.
     "And their internal affairs won't boil over into Land-of-Water's? They have been involved before and Mikah is an obvious target."
     Hirht's expression didn't flicker. "We have been assured that their house is in order; that the [something] [upstarts?] have been removed; that their lands are peaceful and there will be no trouble whatsoever."
     "That's quite a handful of assurances."
     "They have guaranteed Mikah's safety against any unexpected incidents."
     "Great," I muttered. "Do they actually know what 'unexpected' means?"
     "Huhn," Jenes'ahn glared at me then looked back at the Rris king. "Yet he has a point."
     "I do?"
     "Stop that noise. Sir, it is an exceedingly broad generalization."
     "And yet they have made it," Hirht said mildly. "They will be taken at their word."
     Jenes'ahn's head twitched back. "I see," she said. Then again: "I see. I will pass your intentions on to the Guild."
     There was an undercurrent there that I wasn't getting. Was it a species thing? Or just politics?
     "Kh'hitch has papers for you with specifics," Hirht said. "You will depart as soon as the weather settles and the roads harden which should be within the next few days. You will be gone for the best bite of three months, so use the time to get your affairs in order. Your route has already been planned: It'll be east over the Greenlands then Southeast through the Open Wound, following the Ashansi Trail and river through the Rippled Lands and then across the First Step Backwards through Esheir's Wait, Long Way, Thieves Always Return, and Summer Breaks. You'll meet Bluebetter escorts at Summer Breaks and they'll take you down to Yeitas'Mas. If the river is forgiving there'll be water transport, otherwise it's roads downstream to Red Leaves. "
     Jenes'ahn snorted. "That route is easier in spring."
     "We don't have the luxury of waiting. It is well travelled. Quite safe. There shouldn't be any difficulties, even in winter. Of course the upper Ashansi isn't navigable, but the trails will be open and are well-marked. Now, if there's anything you require, Mikah, ask."
     I nodded, bit my lip. No matter their assurances, the thought of travelling in winter made me nervous. For the Rris the cold wasn't really an issue. I'd seen Chihirae quite happily wading through hip-deep drifts in nothing but breeches and her winter coat. For me, it was something to worry quite seriously about. "I will need warm clothes. More than I have now. Coats and the like. And food..."
     "You shall have them. Use the time to prepare and order whatever you need. Now, ah Ties will be expecting you at his offices this morning. I believe you will have a great deal to discuss."
     We left the King's office. Jenes'ahn received a packet from Kh'hitch, sealed with the king's mark in blue wax. As we stepped out of the secretary's office she weighed it thoughtfully and looked at me. "Do you have any idea what this means?"
     "Yeah, it means weeks on the road with you," I sighed.
     "I was thinking the very same thing," she growled.

For a world on the cusp of industrial revolution the Smither Industries works were state-of-the-art. The complex of buildings and workshops down by the waterfront were warehouse-like edifices of brick with slate-gray roofs. As with most Rris architecture the details were on the inside and the outer walls faced the world with blank facades. After passing through the wrought-iron fences and through one of the arched tunnels you found yourself in an interior courtyard; busy little worlds unto themselves, with goods wagons coming and going and Rris bustling to and fro about their business. There was a foundry, with smoke streaming from the tall stacks and occasional flashes of red light as gouts of molten metal were poured in the dimly-lit spaces. There were halls where giant steam engines chuffed and rumbled. There were workshops where those engines drove massive trip hammers and powered saws and drills. Everything was saturated with the ingrained reek of hot metal and coal and fire, resin and cut wood.
     Back home a single C&C or SFS mill could do in a day what this whole enterprise would take weeks to accomplish. Nevertheless, when you considered that a fair bit of that place hadn't existed when I'd come to this world, it had its own kind of impressiveness about it.
     Also, back home we could have made it from the palace to the docks in a few minutes, instead of an hour. That was something that kept getting me about this place: the amount of time it took to get anywhere or send a message. Half a day could easily be lost just getting to and from a single meeting. Protocol tended to dictate that it was the petitioner — the lower ranking individual — who paid the visit, but sometimes that simply wasn't practical.
     We bypassed the worst of the bustle and stopped at the main offices with its rows of large plate windows set amongst clean red brick. A bronze plate beside the main doors was a new touch, the chicken-scratches of Rris script along with something like a logo: something that looked like an abstract geometry, perhaps a celtic knot of some kind. Guards and attendants didn't even attempt to hinder us or ask for identification as we strolled in. They just watched as we crossed the foyer and climbed the broad stone waterfall of the main stairs.
     Chaeitch ah Ties, head engineer of Smither Industries, technical prodigy of Land of Water industrial complex, was in his office, sprawled on his desk reading a paper and smoking a pipe that filled the room with a fug that smelled of dope. Perfectly normal in other words.
     "Busy day?" I asked as I walked in past the assistant who'd gone in to announce us.
     "Huhn?" he looked up from the paper. "Hi, Mikah," he sat himself up and grinned at me, deliberately baring sharp whiteness in a parody of one of my uncontrolled moments. "How's that portrait going?"
     He'd commissioned me to do a picture of him. It was a little... embarrassing. He claimed he'd wanted to get in before the rush. I'd gotten as far as some charcoal sketches.
     "Still on the sketches," I shrugged. "We need another sitting, but things have been a little busy of late."
     "Huhn, and from the looks of things it's going to be getting busier, a? Another visit to see the neighbors, a?"
     In contrast with the ordered neatness of his patron's office, his own was cluttered. Every surface, every shelf and ledge and cranny, was occupied by something, useful or not or otherwise: Books and notebooks, still expensive things in this world, left strewn around like cheap paperbacks; small models of ships and engines and windmills and industrial devices in all manner of completeness; screws and loose gears used as paperweights; a brass cam the length of my leg; a gently whirring kinetic sculpture shaped like vertically oriented, rotating music tines; assorted other trinkets in brass and copper and steel and iron. There was a cabinet behind the desk, an old thing of heavy, dark wood with a pair of doors set with windows made from frameworks of multitudes of tiny, colored-glass triangles. Above that hung a plain, wooden plaque on which was set a battered old compass, protractor and setsquare. Below the grubby window a black, cast-iron radiator clanged a couple of times. That was a new addition, based on the central heating system worked out at my place. It kept the chill off, enough to stop ink freezing in the inkwells.
     "Obviously you've heard the news," I said as I settled myself down on a cushion.
     "Oh, yes," he waved the paper. "Documents arrived this morning. Bluebetter this time."
     "Like Open Fields again?"
     "Pestilence and rot, I hope not," he sighed.
     Chaeitch ah Ties was a rare sort of Rris. He was young, wealthy and an engineering wizard. If I could describe something to him, he had an idea how it could be implemented. Three-phase steam engines? I knew what they were in principal, but he had the ability to turn that into a metal and wood and steam-breathing monster. I could describe a differential joint or boat's screw and he could figure out how to actually implement it. He could do the maths for shear on a metal join or figure out how much of a load a material could take without being crushed. He was also a friend. He was actually someone who didn't seem at all distracted with my differences or scared by my size, he just accepted me. He talked with me, shared wine and jokes and other things. We got on well together, and that wasn't something that often happened.
     "Not what I meant. I meant: the same sort of itinerary? Inspecting things and advising?"
     "Mostly. Within the restrictions imposed by the Guild, of course. But there are specifics we want to be focusing on," he flicked the paper. "There is one I believe the Guild approves of: Standardization."
     It was a tongue-knotting word in Rris; a hybrid of several that had existed before to describe something new that hadn't. I nodded. "Any particular reason?"
     He waved his pipe in the general direction of west. "We've been considering some of what you've said about countries and industries racing ahead and developing their own machines and industry and we have to agree with you. It's been happening already. There's been enough espionage and ideas spread that more than a few are just charging ahead with their own projects. Of course they're all designed and measured and built differently. No part for one would work on another. It could become a real tangle for everyone, especially since there's been some talk of a road of rails."
     I blinked. "Rails? To Bluebetter?"
     "Among other places."
     Jenes'ahn spoke up: "The Guild has been notified of this?"
     "The basics are already quite known to us," Chaeitch waved her query aside. "The Guild mandate was against new ideas. This is simply using old ideas on a much larger scale. The Guild placed no injunctions on such. "
     That the idea was already known was quite true. Small-gauge rails already existed before I'd arrived here, but the earlier cars had been animal-drawn. There were much newer variants utilizing steam engines and I had mixed feelings about them. On one hand they were handy test platforms for future improvements and systems; on the other they gave people ideas. The Mediators weren't happy at something that'd been developed before they'd had a chance to examine the ramifications; I wasn't too keen on them for other reasons.
     "Perhaps we should have placed restrictions on [something] ideas," Jenes'ahn muttered.
     "The whole idea of rail between cities has been discussed many times before," Chaeitch said, "but there have always been problems with the machines and the metals and the techniques. There was that debacle with the trail from here to Blizzard's Coat for instance. Then there were the questions whether or not it would be worth it, or whether it would just end up a rotting carcass. Mikah's been able to answer most of those concerns and now industry and governments are extremely interested. Land-of-Water, Bluebetter, Overburdened and Cover-my-Tail are all in support of a trail, but before anything can be done there we have to sort out standards. That may be tricky."
     "Really?" I asked. "All you have to do is get all those governments and Guilds and merchants to agree. Piece of cake."
     "What does that mean?" Jenes'ahn asked.
     "He means it won't be easy," Chaeitch smirked.
     "What?" She looked perplexed. "How can it mean that?"
     "Well, he also says the cake is a lie."
     Jenes'ahn's ears twisted as glared at him, at me and then back again. "Is this true?"
     "Absolutely," I said.
     She stared at me, then snarled, "You're being deliberately obtuse again."
     "Constable," Chaeitch was amused, "he's like that to everyone, beggar or diplomat. It's something you get accustomed to."
     "I have neither the inclination nor time for such frivolous things," she growled, literally.
     "Make some," I suggested. "You know, some of the best things in life are frivolous."
     She hissed exasperation.
     "But he's absolutely right about getting any sort of accord on this," Chaeitch mused, taking a haul on his pipe, then blowing a cloud of smoke toward the window. "They will insist on doing things their own way for some superficial gain; practicalities will be set aside for monetary reasons; anything we suggest will be suspected of being a fabrication to create some advantage for us, which will probably have some justification. All the usual political back-biting and skulking."
     "Guild Mediation is an option."
     "Aren't you already doing that?" I asked.
     "You have a better suggestion?"
     "Perhaps Mikah can help," Chaeitch said.
     I shrugged. "If it's dealing with Rris, then I'm not a good person to ask. I don't seem to have a good history of understanding how you think."
     "No, but you aren't Rris."
     "And you think that makes him impartial?" Jenes'ahn sounded dubious.
     "Others might," he replied. "He's not Rris and that might influence them."
     "Perhaps not favorably," Jenes'ahn said.
     "Huh, perhaps. But I think that he will have influence no matter what. They did specifically request to have him present," he pointed out.
     Jenes'ahn chewed on that and Chaeitch swung to his feet, stepped over to the cabinet behind the desk. Metal clicked and the particolored glass doors opened smoothly onto rows of bottles, shelves of amber and black and green and clear glass or ceramics in a wide range of shapes and sizes. "Meantime, midmeal should be here shortly and something to accompany it will, I think, be welcome," he proclaimed as he looked through the ranked bottles. "Ah. Mikah. Here. All the way from Hunting Well. It's an older vintage so I think it may suit your taste."
     He poured, filling a couple of the wide-bodied glasses with pale liquid. Jenes'ahn declined — she was on duty. Her loss; our gain. And he was right about the taste: the wine had been aged more than was common for many Rris vintages, which did make it more palatable to me. It wasn't nearly as tart as most of their wines. And lunch, when it arrived, had been prepared with me in mind. My dishes had chunks of shish-kebobed meat that had actually been cooked, more baked goods than suited Rris palates, and spiced black sausages that were pretty good.
     "The schedule's going to be busy," Chaeitch said, in between carefully licking blood from his fingers. "Our main objective's moving them toward agreeing on standards in construction and engineering. They're going to want to fish and snatch whatever bites of knowledge from you that they can. We're going to have to try and use their desires to coax them into following our game: a few simple rules that will make the rewards richer for all.
     "There's going to be tours and inspections of their existing facilities. They will want talks and interviews with you to find out what could be done. Meetings with landowners and merchant guilds. Meetings with their engineers. I'm afraid there will also be social functions where you can meet their various tree-climbers and gold-tufts."
     Show me off, in other words.
     "And there's..." he stopped. His ears wilted. "Oh."
     "Inspections by their physicians and scholars, right?"
     He waved an affirmative, tipping his cupped palm up. "I'm sorry."
     I sighed. "What is it with that? Do they think I'm a Rris in a costume?"
     "I think they'd like to be able to prove that," he said. "That sort of deniability is preferable to what you really represent."
     "What's that?"
     "A reminder that there're things out of their control; that the world is a good deal more complex than they'd like it to be." He picked up a bloody cube of meat, scrutinized it — turning it this way and that — then popped it into his mouth.
     "I can deal with it," I said. "I've had worse."
     He winced, or grimaced.
     "It can't be so bad," Jenes'ahn opined.
     "Huh, do you enjoy strangers sticking their fingers into your vagina?" Chaeitch rumbled. It was my turn to wince. Tactful.
     "You exaggerate," she said.
     "Not entirely," I told her. "Your Guild had their turn. You could ask what they did."
     She made a low growling sound but didn't offer anything further.
     "Aside from that unpleasantness," Chaeitch continued, "there shouldn't be anything too onerous. The schedule is almost entirely meetings of various descriptions."
     "Any time to see the sights?"
     "Monkey curiosity," he said to Jenes'ahn.
     "Hey, hairball..."
     "I'm sure they'll give you tours," he interjected with a chitter. "Of course there'll be several weeks of 'seeing the sights' on the way there, but they'll want to try and impress you so you can be pretty sure that you'll be shown around. And they know you have interests in arts and that sort of carry-on so I'm sure they'll try to accommodate you in that respect. Anything to impress. And, of course, they'll use those opportunities to casually ask your opinion or ideas. I think you'll want to be careful then, especially if the Guild is with you."
     "And even if we're not."
     "Thank you, Constable," Chaeitch replied without missing a beat. He inspected his pipe, tapped it out into an ashtray and fished a packet from a drawer in his desk. "They're doubtless thinking it will be a good chance to meet with you with your guard down, which means they are hoping for something, which gives us something to grab onto."
     "You've been talking with Rraerch about this, haven't you," I said.
     He twitched his ears as he tamped his favorite brand of weed into his pipe. "She's been doing some reading, a. We're pretty sure they want things. That should mean we will have something to offer them in exchange for some cooperation in [ratifying ] some sort of usable standard."
     "Anything in mind?" He took a small packet from his vest pocket, withdrew a single little stick and struck it against the packet. Jenes'ahn blinked as it flared to life and Chaeitch looked from me to the Mediator and smiled. "Perhaps we should take a walk."

The factory halls were noisy places, even for me. Under the high ceilings supported by wrought-iron girders thousand kilo trip hammers pounded away, each impacting with a noise that was almost palpable. Rolling mills growled, spitting out tongues of orange-red steel. Sparks fountained in the gloom as one of the converters blasted compressed air through a mass of liquid metal. The atmosphere was searing hot and stank of burnt metal, of chemicals and soot. Rris workers in these places wore heavy leather aprons and gloves and either shaved exposed fur back or kept it drenched with water against radiant heat and ballistic beads of molten iron. You could recognize them out of uniform by those shaved patches and the singed fur.
     Any OSH inspector would have had multiple conniptions at the sight of the place, but here all that industry was state-of-the-art: cutting edge stuff that was still under development even as it was being used. I may have had knowledge and experience that the Rris didn't have, but I was by no means an engineer or metallurgist. I knew fragments, bits and pieces about this and that, what was possible and could be achieved. I was educated and my profession had exposed me to multitudes of other fields, but I had no formal training in any of the details. I could tell them about a Bessemer converters or air-transfer furnaces and perhaps scrape up some images and information on high-temperature resistant ceramics in my 'pedia, but it was up to the eager Rris to fill in the dots. And Rris like Chaeitch were oh-so eager.
     They smelted and tested and rejected different alloys on a daily basis. They poured moulds and milled and trialed and then melted the results down to try again with a slightly different mix. Notes were taken and compared. Out in the workshops different kinds of band saws, lathes, drills and hammers were lined up alongside one another in competition. Some were dismantled husks, in the process of recycling their outdated parts to the newer and more efficient or effective models. Steam engines hissed and snorted, spewing vapor and coating surfaces with condensing water. The smallest of those new models was about the size of a large fridge and put out as much power as the house-sized monstrosities that'd been state-ofthe-art when I arrived two years before. And they were far more reliable and economic to run.
     Chaeitch led us past these sights; through more great, echoing halls and through locked and guarded airlock-type doors into corridors that were much cleaner, quieter and secure. Gas lamps glimmered along hallways of arched, red brick vaults overhead and walled in white and grey. Heavy, black wooden doors recessed into alcoves on either side of the hall all had prominent bulky locks. There were guards making their rounds, and I even saw a couple of Mediators crossing a hall ahead of us.
     "Your people are watching all this," Chaeitch told Jenes'ahn as he led us to one door. There was an engraved Rris character on a brass plate, something I translated as 'Grade Three Finishing'. Beneath that was tacked a bit of paper with something I couldn't read scrawled on it. A solid black iron key went into the equally solid lock and turned with a meaty clunk. "They're insisting on the secrecy. The old smithy was too open for their tastes. "
     Behind the door was a workshop. Deserted and chilly. A big multi-paned window at the far end looked out over the central court and let grey sunlight slant across benches and drafting tables. Tools were laid out on the benches, light glinting off sharp edges. Overhead several gleaming metal shafts ran across the room: in through a greased socket on one wall and out through another in the opposite. Horrible things, those drive shafts. Spinning maimmachines if people didn't watch themselves, but until we got electric motors sorted out, they had to do. Thick canvas belts in protective mesh cages hung down from those shafts, connecting to further reduction gears and drive trains which in turn led to small bench lathes and drill presses. Cabinets covered the walls, along with racks of wood and ingots of metal.
     "We've got plenty of ideas that Bluebetter would love to have," he said, "but I think the trick will be to make them want what we want them to have."
     Chaeitch crossed to one of the cabinets and used a much smaller key to unlock it. He withdrew a couple of wooden shoebox-sized boxes and carried them to a workbench. "These are some of the first castings," he said. "They probably won't work by themselves, but as garnishing provided along with other offerings, they may be far more appealing." He opened one of the cases.
     "Aw, nuts," I said.
     They were. Several sizes of nuts and bolts in gleaming steel, unnecessarily nestled into blue velvet padding . The castings were good, with neatly beveled edges and clean grooves on the bolts.
     Jenes'ahn picked up a nut and bolt and neatly spun the former onto the later. "Just these?" she asked. I could hear the skepticism.
     The other box contained spanners made from tough, low-carbon steel. "The metal workers got the mix right," Chaeitch said. "They don't rust easily. They're hard, but they don't shatter if they're dropped. They don't look like much, but we're going to start using them as part of our [standardization] system."
     He didn't actually call it that. They didn't have a single word for a concept like that. What he said was something that could be translated as same-everywhere system, but the gist of it was the same.
     "They're all identical?"
     "As close as we can get. Along with an optimized thread. Dies can be provided."
     "What did you decide to use?" I asked. That was what had kept a lot of very intelligent Rris up at night: what to base your standards on? My laptop had contained suggestions — gold, platinum, iridium, speed of light, water. The problem with some of the more exotic materials was that while the Rris knew of them — some of their scholars had developed their own periodic table — they were exorbitantly expensive, rare, or both.
     "All the scholars agreed that the numbers made sense. Water. As pure as is possible, at specific temperatures and pressure: a point just above freezing and at sea level. A cubic mass of specific weight, each face of which is divided into hundredths. A base ten system for simplicity. There were those who argued for eight," he snorted, "but that would doubtless cause issues. We have engraved the length standards on a gold measure, but a more precise dead metal would be preferable."
     Jenes'ahn was examining the tools. "They are all identical?"
     "As near as is possible for us," he said. "Mikah's kind have measuring capabilities that go down to the bricks that make everything, so they would doubtless find them grossly imprecise. We do what we can."
     "And how would these be of value?"
     "They're going to be the ties that hold the world together," he flashed a grin. "Those bolts will hold boilers and plate metal. They'll secure the girders of bridges, the arms of cranes, the beams of buildings. And anything built with these can be repaired by anyone with the standard tools."
     She turned one of the larger nuts — a lump of metal about the size of her fist — over and over. "And you're intending to sell these?"
     "Not sell: give," Chaeitch corrected. "Along with copies of the moulds and dies and the metal formula. On provision that the recipient agree to start using standard measurements."
     "Huhn," she coughed, obviously dubious. "For a government to do something another government told it to do... that isn't a regular event."
     "Hopefully it will make sense. We're starting to do it. Word has gone out to manufactories and Guilds that the Palace will be requiring these changes. Any other goods we start to produce from now will be using these measurements. Anyone purchasing from us would end up working with them anyway."
     That wasn't going to be a small undertaking. Retooling a country... It made sense to do it now though. The longer they left it the worse the change-over would become.
     She wrinkled her muzzle, contemplating the boxes. "And these measurements include weights?"
     "A."
     "Then you may do better promoting the trade and tax benefits of such a system," she said. "The amount lost in commerce due to disparities and mistakes in measurements and weight conversions between parties — tariffs and duties and so forth — is not inconsiderable."
     Chaeitch mulled that over.
     "Does it happen a lot?" I asked.
     The Mediator eyed me. "There are some stretches of the Muddy River where three different currencies and measuring systems exist in as many days travel. It's common. Wars have started over such."
     "A," Chaeitch added, "if someone makes a mistake on a shipment of coal, either converting weight or currency or even just rounding too generously, then it can get expensive. That's really Rraerch's business, not mine."
     "You might find politicians are more responsive toward gold than bridges," Jenes'ahn said as she put the weighty hex of metal back in its case.
     "For some reason," Chaeitch grumbled. "Bridges make gold, but gold makes terrible bridges."
     "Money talks," I said.
     "In its own language, a," he said. "You're right: it's another angle to come from. I think Rraerch should deal with that side."
     "Is there anything else that you might use for bargaining?" Jenes'ahn asked.
     He tipped his head, then twitched his ears. "A, there're things like the liquid stone and some of the new smelting techniques that we know they'll be interested in. There're other works in progress as well as a huge number of new ideas, but we're limited in what we can build. There simply aren't the people or facilities available to work on them all. We've developed machinery for pulling wire which lets us produce anything from fine strands up to metal rods quite easily. That also lets us make a kind of steel rope which has applications in all sorts of machinery and construction, but as yet we don't have the metal required to use them. The amounts required are... considerable. Still, nothing compared with what would be required for a road of rails through three countries."
     Jenes'ahn's muzzle twitched back showing a flash of teeth as she surveyed the bench.
     "Those have been approved by the Guild?"
     "A. Some of the lathes weren't. Also some of the stamps that can make the cylinders for ammunition and the formula for explosive caps."
     "You were surprised?" she said.
     He just snorted.
     "The other rooms here, you're doing similar work in there?"
     "A. Nothing that's in any state to work, though. Your people have inspected them."
     "I will see them," she said. Not asking: stating.
     Chaeitch just blinked at her and then just waved a shrug. "Very well."
     The samples were packed away and he made sure the door was locked. Then he led us to the next room. It was very much like the one we'd just left, save the benches were covered with black felt cloths and on those cloths were arrayed stacks of little brass gears. Hundreds, thousands of them. Arranged into stacks of size and shapes. There were a couple of Rris in there, seated on stools and using magnifying glasses as they used tiny files to smooth parts of the gears down. They glanced up as we entered, then froze, staring like rabbits in headlights.
     "What is this?" Jenes'ahn frowned.
     "Parts of a machine the University is trying to build," Chaeitch said. "They just commissioned us to make these parts."
     "What sort of machine?"
     "A modified Johis Gear," he said.
     "And what does that do?"
     "Mathematical calculations and the like. The University already have some that follow and predicts the movements of planets and stars — like orreries. The university has enlisted the Clockmakers Guild to help them with a larger version with more precise and flexible gearing." He gestured at the rows of glittering stars and the workers who were still staring at us — at me.
     "Other applications?"
     "Mathematical. Accounting and book-keeping. Engineering calculations possibly. If it works. There are some remarkably complex problems to overcome. Do you know how much friction and resistance a chain of a hundred sprockets creates?"
     She snorted, put off by the tech-talk. I bit my tongue, almost laughing at just how typically middle-management that was.
     The government of Land-of-Water had seen some of the things the human race had done and decided there was something to be said for R&D. Smither Industries, the favored government shop, had received considerable funding to step up their own programs. And they'd done so with gusto.
     Scattered around the city, Smither Industries had groups working on all sorts of projects, all part of Smither Industries R&D. I'd been to most of them many times before with Chaeitch, and I was also quite aware that there were places I didn't know about working on things I'd rather not think about. Jenes'ahn certainly hadn't seen all of these places. Possibly none of the other places.
     The new concepts had required old buildings be reoccupied and refurbished and new ones constructed. There were the floors where Rris were working on more steam engines, trying to make them better, stronger, faster. Those workshops were littered with sketches and diagrams and tubing and scale models and bits of burst boilers. There was a department in the shipyards with a new watertunnel where boats were being designed, built and tested: another where heavy machine tools were planned out. Metallurgical research occupied a wing, as did the industrial machinery section with their work on looms and mills. On bad days you could smell the building where the Chemist's Guild operated under contract. Modern infrastructure requires that many disciplines work in cooperation, and that was something that the individualistic Guilds were learning, and were concerned about.
     This corridor housed more modest endeavors. One of the rooms was filled with nothing but sections of pipe, wire and weird, twisted failings of some of the drawing machinery, all labeled and dated. Another contained Rris working on refining gas lamps, trying different treatments for mantles. In another room they were making pencils, and in another working on what looked like a mimeograph. The last room had some of the interesting toys: the coils of copper wire, the woven fiber sheaths and weird glass baubles and aquarium-like containers with the plates of metal suspended in dirty liquids. It wasn't being used at the time, the workbenches covered with dustcloths.
     "What's this?" Jenes'ahn asked, poking a gizmo that was mostly a ceramic pole with a copper ball on top.
     "Scholars who've toyed with it over the years call it quick-sparks," Chaeitch told her. "Mikah's kind calls it eserisity. Some noise like that. We're trying to learn how to harness it as they do."
     I couldn't read her expression as she looked around the room. "Where is it?"
     "It's not something you can normally see. These devices manufacture and manipulate various forms of it. Perhaps a demonstration?" Chaeitch asked.
     "Absolutely."
     "Huhnn," he looked around as if thinking, then told her, "Stand on that." He pointed to a block of wood on the floor. She blinked and did so, cautiously. He flicked back a dust cover and picked up another box from the workbench , this one a crudely-joined jury-rig about thirty centimeters to a side, with a copper ball like doorknob on one side and a crank handle poking out the other. "Hold that ball. Don't let it go or step off the block."
     She looked suspicious.
     "It's quite safe," he assured her.
     She placed hands on the copper ball. He started to crank the handle.

"You thought that was amusing," Jenes'ahn snarled accusingly as I pulled the carriage door closed and sat back in the creaking, overstuffed leather of the bench. It was like a refrigerator in the cab. Cold enough to freeze the moisture out of the air. She was still brushing angrily at the fur on her arms. The fur crackled and popped up again.
     I looked at her and bit my tongue. Hard. "No. No, really," I said.
     She banged on the carriage roof and yelled, "Go!" to the driver, then glared at me. "Your face is hot and you sound like you're choking," she growled through a face that still looked like a furious chiapet. "You're laughing!"
     "Not laughing," I squeaked, trying to keep a straight face, trying not to start grinning. "Definitely not laughing."
     "Rot," she scrubbed at her cheek tufts again, trying to smooth them back. "Shave you. I'm going to let those Bluebetter doctors bleed you dry. I'm going to tell them about your strange sexual antics in detail. In fact, I believe I'll make some up."
     "Okay, okay, don't get your hackles up," I smirked and she gaped her jaw in a furious hiss that leaked white clouds of condensing breath like a steam engine.
     "Mikah, you have a rotted contract!"
     "A. But we weren't in public then, were we?"
     She hissed in disgust, eyes black. Her fur crackled in the cold, dry air as she tried to brush it flat again.
     The carriage rattled away from Smither Industries, out through the entry arch and turned hard right onto the street. Thin, grey-white overcast turned the late afternoon light grey and flat. A cold wind was blowing in from the lake and it would still take an hour or so to get home. The Mediator seethed and tried to smooth her fur out again. I watched my breath misting in the light that filtered in through the window; watched the alien city plodding past outside and thought about what was to come.
     "What was that?" she snarled after a while.
     "Huhn?" I looked up from my reverie.
     "That box. All those... things," she waved a hand, grasping for words she didn't have. "You know what they were?"
     "A," I said and met her eyes. She stared back. One of her hands was still stroking down the fur on her arm. She'd been more upset by that than I'd realized. "Oh, okay," I relented. "They were toys, most of them. Toys that use electricity. The force that powers my lamp and other things."
     "Your Johis Gear device," she said, pointedly.
     She'd caught that. Or known all along. "Uh, a distant relative of, a," I shrugged. "They're powered by that same force. Those devices back there're all experiments in the way that force behaves. They help to understand it, which you really need to before you can utilize it properly. Chaeitch wants to build some generators and communication devices using it, so they've been experimenting. If you don't know what you're doing, electricity can be very dangerous."
     "You've said before that it's the same as lighting."
     "Similar. Similar to. In the same way a puddle is to an ocean: same thing but much smaller."
     "So it could be a weapon?"
     I snorted and flipped my hand in a negative. "No. No. There've been a lot of... imaginative ideas, but nobody's ever found a practical way. Bulky, awkward, unpredictable, dangerous to the user... It has uses in some regards, but as a direct weapon, no."
     "Indirectly, then"
     "In the same way that fire or wood or steel can be part of a weapon. My machine uses it as... like water flowing through a mill race, but it isn't the machine in itself. It is very useful and has many applications. Mostly for the better, I think."
     The Mediator sat back, staring at me whilst smoothing the fur on her wrists and hands down. "You think?"
     I sighed a white cloud and stared out the window again. Alien laundry flapped against a cold sky. Brightly colored rugs were hanging from racks in front of a store. "Do you think the rail-road is a good idea?"
     "You have an opinion of it?"
     "It seems very risky, a? A huge undertaking that must have enormous risks and consequences. If it is built — if--it will require a great deal of effort and workers. New jobs will be created to build it and operate it. Goods and information and people will move faster than you can think possible. A journey that took a month will take a couple of days. Cargos that filled hundreds of wagons will fill one vehicle. Perishable goods will be able to be traded between countries. Food can be shifted to provide relief for stricken regions. People will be able to travel more easily and faster and further. They will take ideas with them, and what those will be, who can say?
     "Oh, there will be problems. Carters will not like the loss of business; towns off the route may suffer; the engines can be noisy, smelly things that start fires... but many carters will be able to adapt. They will be needed to move goods from the countryside to the rail stops, and they will need to do so more often; the towns can also adapt; the engines can be made faster, cleaner. It's a big, bold undertaking that obviously has many huge benefits and liabilities; many great problems will be caused; people will never accept it. All that's obvious, a?"
     She waved cautious consent.
     "Now, I've noticed that the servants at the house work very hard. A great deal of time is spent cleaning floors and rugs. They have to roll rugs, carry the things outside and beat them clean, then return them. By the time they finish cleaning the house, the place they did first needs cleaning again and they have to do it all over again. Hard, dull work, a? What about a small device that you just rub over the rugs and floor and it picks up the dirt for you? A good idea?"
     "On the surface, a," she said, obviously smelling a set-up.
     "A. It means it only takes a single servant a fraction of the time to clean a room. That means the large staff becomes... ah... redundant? If many households realize they can save money by simply using these cheap devices, they will dismiss servants. There will suddenly be a large number of people without work. What do they do? What can they do? Are there enough other jobs for them to go to? Can they feed their dependents? If they can't, what then? Will they leave? Will there be unrest?" I shrugged, my shoulders rubbing against the worn leather of the seat. My jaw and throat hurt after all that. My vocal apparatus wasn't up to speaking the Rris language for extended periods.
     "A simple thing," I said, "but it could pose more unforeseen issues than a far more spectacular undertaking."
     She chewed that for a while. "It was like that for your kind?" she asked.
     "In a way. There was unrest, yes. But that brought in other changes that improved a lot of peoples' lives. There are differences in our societies that mean what happened to us won't happen here. Not exactly the same way."
     "Then why..."
     "Because no-one can predict just what these ideas will do. Sometimes, those big, impressive, foreboding things fit in perfectly well while the most innocuous little conveniences cause larger problems."
     "Huhnn," she rumbled, tipping her head pointedly. "You're trying to guess what will be harmful; what will be disruptive." I sighed, frustrated. "Constable, we couldn't do that. We still can't. It was only when looking back that we could see the effects of what had happened. Or maybe what had caused the effects."
     "You think we shouldn't be controlling this knowledge."
     "No, I think that you shouldn't think you can... anticipate all this knowledge. I doubt anyone can. There are some things that you don't need or want, I accept that. I agree. But if you try to micromanage... to control every tiny detail, you will sink in over your head: floundering around trying to do everything and accomplishing nothing."
     For some time she didn't say a word. Then: "With the exception of those metaphors you chewed and spat out again, that's one of the most intelligent things I've heard you say."
     "I have my moments."
     "Apparently so," she growled. "If there were more moments like that and fewer of those cub-play pranks, one might think you were sane."
     In that frigid cab with its plush trappings, with the sounds and smells of an inhuman city filtering in from outside and a bipedal cat sitting opposite, I grinned back. "Sane? By whose standards?"

Dusk was crisp and cold, an autumn evening under a spreading ink-stain sky. I stepped down out of the cab, the gravel crunching under my feet and my breath streaming out on an icy breeze. In the distance I heard Rris calling — the guards at the gatehouse. Closer to hand the firs in the windbreak whispered and creaked, out beyond the rising shape of the house. Gabled rooflines rose in a series of steep peaks against the skyline. Smoke trickled from the chimneys and lamplight glimmered out the windows and through the colored glazing on the front door, spilling across the porch and creating a welcoming island of warmth in the twilight. Windchimes tinkled softly. I breathed deeply, cold air aching in my sinuses, smelling pine and water and winter and just stood there, trying to ease some of the tension the day had left.
     Behind me there were low voices, then squeaks of metal and wood, grinding of iron on stone as the team of elk turned the loop at the end of the drive and head back towards the gate. A dark figure stalked past me, ghosting across the gravel with less sound than the shadow of a cloud in moonlight. At the porch steps she turned to watch me, leaning against one of the posts. Her eyes caught some errant light, gleaming like a pair of bright coins in a dark well.
     I dithered, strolled to the edge of the drive to look out across the meadow toward the firs. Their tall silhouettes swayed slightly against the marginally lighter horizon, foliage shushing in the breeze. No voices, no engines or vehicles. I luxuriated in uninterrupted, pure silence for a while longer before I turned back to the house.
     Tich had the front door open when I stepped onto the porch. The warmth that spilled out was quite welcome after a long, cold day. "Good evening, sir," she greeted me as I stepped into the foyer and hastened to take my coat as I shrugged out of it. "Everything went well?"
     Everything was immaculate, as usual. Brilliant and spotlessly white new plaster on the walls rising up to the mezzanine; polished wooden floor with the beautiful blue and green circular rug with the silver inlays in the center of the octagonal space. All washed in the soft light of the gas lamps. I tracked muddy bootprints across the floor and the Rris left matching pawprints, but I knew they'd all be gone within minutes.
     "As well as can be expected," I said as she hung the coat from the rack. "Looks like I'll be going away again. Another of these diplomatic trips."
     "Yes, sir."
     "I think I'm going to be needing some warm clothes. Something will have to be arranged with the tailor. I think I will need new foot-wear also."
     "Yes, sir." She clasped hands in front of her and looked politely interested. "Is there a departure date set?"
     "When the weather's clement," I said. "Perhaps a week."
     "Very good, sir. If there is anything else you'll require, a list would be convenient." "I'll have something for you in the morning." "Very good, sir," she ducked her head, then added, "Her Ladyship isn't back yet. I understand she intended to attend to some late business. But she should back before evening meal, she said. It can be ready in two hours, if that's all right?"
     "That would be great. Thank you, Tich."
     The major domo inclined her head once more and then and stalked off, past an older, scarred male who'd been lurking quietly in the background.
     "Where is it this time?" the older Mediator asked in a voice that rasped and growled even more than was usual for Rris.
     "Bluebetter," Jenes'ahn replied.
     "Journey in winter?"
     "A. It looks... complicated," she said, twitching an ear my way.
     "Huhn," the older Mediator growled. Of the two of them I found him to be more... tolerable. Rohinia was more discreet; less pushy, less brash. Less full of himself. That all might have been deliberate. Perhaps they were playing a good-cop, annoying-cop game, I didn't know. I didn't really care. I tolerated them like I would an irritating drizzle.
     I didn't have much choice.
     The older Mediator with the voice like a Rottweiler's growl wasn't that tall for a Rris, but he was solidly built. His winter pelt was shaggy grey, speckled salt and pepper. A ragged patch across his throat hinted at why his voice sounded the way it did. I had a very similar gouge through my left cheek so didn't have to ask how he'd received it. Perhaps that was why I had more respect for him than his younger partner: he'd made some mistakes and knew there were consequences.
     "Complicated, huhn?" he made an inquiring noise.
     I didn't miss the little gesture Jenes'ahn threw him. He glanced at me and scratched his chin tuft. "Hai, everything else here is settled, so I think you should get your report done while it's still fresh in your recollection. I'll take the watch now."
     "A," she inclined her head, gathered her coat and stalked off across the foyer, climbing the stairs, every step she took utterly smooth and utterly silent.
     When she'd gone from sight, but probably not from earshot, I asked Rohinia, "You want a report from me too?"
     "I don't think that's necessary. Her's will probably be more legible," he said with a dismissive flick of his hand.
     Ouch.
     "And tomorrow," he continued, "I'll pay a visit to the Hall. I don't doubt they'll have more information to add to it."
     Yeah, the Guild probably had access to a lot of information I hadn't been given. They seemed to have fingers in everyone's pies, which was very unhygienic, but, when it came down to it, it was their business.
     "Have fun," I shrugged and headed for the stairs.
     I'd made the first landing before his voice came up from below: "What did you do to her?"
     "Whatever do you mean?" I asked innocently.
     He snorted. "She was... annoyed. That sound like your games again."
     Safely out of his sight I grinned. "Oh, I'm sure she'll tell you all about it in her report."

My shower was unusual. Unusual in that — as far as I knew — it was the only one in the city; perhaps in the world. Rris don't seem to like them very much. Chihirae had tried it; said the water got in her ears and the whole experience just made her feel soggy and heavy. But I appreciated it, especially after those... interesting days.
     I took my time and enjoyed the plentiful hot water. In a few days I'd be on the road again. I'd done that in winter before, and I knew that here it meant long, uncomfortable, cold and boring days with very few chances for washing, let alone a hot bath. Weeks there and then weeks back again.
     Oh, joy, that really was something to look forward to. I spent a good fifteen minutes just standing under a near-scalding stream of water and appreciating it. Then it was some time dealing with my teeth. I didn't want to think about what Rris dentists might be like, so they were a concern. No processed sugary foods here, that was a plus. The downside was there was also no toothpaste, no floss, no damn toothbrushes. Rris don't use products like that, and don't seem to have as many problems with their teeth. Diet-related, most likely. They actually enjoy chewing on bones and cartilage, which might help. For me, my toothbrush was worn down to a nub. I had to get new ones made, which cost me a pretty penny. And toothpaste was out of the question, so salt water had to suffice.
     It was a ritual that certainly got me some strange looks. Especially when on the road.
     Following that I had an hour or so to work through a quick list of what I was going to need Tich to sort out for me. Which, as it turned out, wasn't time enough. I sorted out the list quickly enough, and did some sketches to illustrate some items that Rris tailors and leatherworkers didn't normally produce, but the stumbling block came when I tried to actually write it out so Rris could read it.
     The lamp flickered in a draught as I painstakingly scribed out the list in Rris script, carefully wielding the locally-made fountain pen. Over to one side were my previous efforts papers covered with errant blotches of ink and crossed-out efforts. It'd taken longer than I'd thought, but I'd gone through my notes and my lessons and figured out the words I needed for the list. I was pretty sure they were the right words; I was pretty sure they were spelt correctly; I just needed to write it out neatly.
     "Do you need help?" ventured a voice behind me.
     I flinched. The pen skittered and a dollop of ink seeped across the page.
     "Oh," said the voice. Chihirae leaned past my shoulder, regarding my work. "Sorry. I can do that for you, you know."
     I sighed and laid the treacherous pen down. "I can do it."
     She leaned closer to examine my effort. "You need... green rocks and an elk with a coat on its feet?"
     "What?"
     "That's... here," she pointed, tapping the paper with a claw and chittered.
     I looked. Squinted. "You are joking?"
     "No. No joke."
     I sagged. "Oh, shit. I thought I had it right."
     "A good effort," she chittered again and said and rubbed her velvet cheek against the side of my head. "Perhaps you should come back to school, a?"
     "You have some lessons in mind, a?"
     A low growl rumbled softly beside me, then she my ear. "I'm sure there are a few exercises we can go over," a low voice breathed against my skin.
     "Hmmm?"
     "Your modifiers, for example," she said brightly. "They most certainly need more study. And when you're using subjects in a list, the predicate..."
     I cut her short with a bump of my head against hers. "Not quite the lessons I had in mind."
     Amusement. "Not? I thought you wanted to learn. And looking at this," she leaned over the desk, the soft glow from the lamp diffusing through her fur and profiling her in a golden nimbus, "you need it. Anyway, what is this for?"
     I leaned back and rolled my shoulders. "Ah, now that is a story."
     "Hurr? Does it involve what you were doing today?"
     "Oh, now you want information," I grinned, leaning back.
     She grinned right back at me, white teeth glittering in the half-light. "You don't want to tell me? Huhn, well then, it does look like a list of things for you: warm clothing and things you might need on a journey. So I'm assuming you're going to be going somewhere. They're sending you away again?"
     "You're so sharp you'll cut yourself," I warned.
     Chihirae chittered back and then cocked her head, staring intently at my face, "That is it, though, isn't it? They want you to travel. In winter. They do know you get cold when someone leaves a window open?"
     I nodded; a human gesture that she knew as well as any of her own, "Ah. It's complicated. There are things to tell you and something to ask. I think... over food. Evening meal should be ready by now."
     It was. And it was welcome. A busy day and the cold weather had taken their toll and I was ready for a good meal. Cook had come to grips with my requirements and learned to cook meat properly and go easy on the mystery meats. Rris are predominantly carnivore: they'll quite happily eat any part of an animal that can't actually run away. My squeamishness was just another peculiarity to them, but I was learning to appreciate a good cut of tongue or the blood sausages they made.
     That night's offering was a thick stew of bison beef, potatoes, the local barley equivalent along with thick chunks of fresh-baked bread made from said same. Given a choice the homemade stuff was preferable to mill-bought bread: it was less likely to contain little surprise extras like broken shards of millstone or bits of rodent. We sat in what I perceived as cozy dimness of the living room to eat, the heavy crock pot on the low table between us so we could dunk bread in the remains of the stew. The food was simple and filling, even if the cutlery was silver, the crockery something like bone china and far more formal and expensive than anything I'd have used for a casual meal back home. In the gloom it was warm and informal, so Chihirae sat in winter-weight fur and a lightweight green kilt and I related what had happened that day, what his highness had told me and what they expected me to do. She listened as she masticated her way through half a pot of the stew.
     "Down to Bluebetter," she summed up dubiously. "In winter. You."
     "That's about it," I said.
     "You know you don't like the cold," she pointed out. "They know this."
     "A," I twisted the stem of my wine glass between thumb and forefinger, watching the liquid swirling. "I think it says something about the urgency of the matter."
     "Or their ambivalence toward your wellbeing."
     "I'm not so sure," I said. "There was something they said that indicates they have thought about it."
     "What was that?"
     "They asked if I'd like to take you along."
     Chihirae froze. Absolutely motionless for a few seconds before she raised her muzzle. Her eyes caught light and glimmered titanium. "What was your answer?"
     "My answer was that I would ask you."
     Her ears twitched back and she picked up her wine, dipping her muzzle to lap at it. In the silence I had to ask: "What was your meeting this evening about?"
     "What?" she cocked her head. "You think that was related?"
     I shrugged, apologetically. "I'm not sure. They leapt out at me with that news and on the same day you're called to a late meeting, which isn't usual. I thought..." I trailed off, unsure of how to word it tactfully.
     "What?"
     "I thought they might have told you how to answer my question."
     She blinked, then snorted and took another sip: a flash of a pink tongue into the wine. "No. Huhn, no. No, it wasn't anything to do with that."
     "Oh. Just a parent-teacher night, a?"
     She stared down into the glass. I'd touched something there. "It wasn't just that, was it," I said.
     "Not exactly."
     "Then what? Trouble? Did someone threaten you?"
     "No. Not like that." She sighed and set the wine down. "It was a parent of a cub at the crèche. Influential. He offered me a lot... money, land, all that. I just had to ask you things."
     "Things?"
     "Things that you know," she waved a hand in a gesture that encompassed generality. "Ideas and devices. Things to give them advantages."
     "Them?"
     "He's not the first to try this. The fourth, actually."
     "Oh. Oh... rot," I took a deep breath. "Why didn't you say something?"
     "I thought you had quite enough to deal with," she said.
     "But didn't the Guild..."
     "I didn't tell them the details," she said, just as quietly. "I chose not to."
     "But why..." I started to ask before my brain caught up with my mouth. "Oh," I dunked a chunk of bread in cooling sauce and nibbled as I considered. "These... individuals, they're related to the children you're teaching. And they are quite influential?"
     She gave a small smile and a gesture of affirmation. "A."
     So they could ruin her career if they chose. They could simply remove their students, choose other tutors, shut her out of her own livelihood. "They haven't threatened anything if you don't cooperate?"
     No, she waved. "They have made offers in exchange for my [complicity? Cooperation?], that is all. I don't believe it is illegal."
     "Nothing more? No threats?"
     I was favored with a curious look, as if she had to explain that ice was cold. "Openly? With the Guild involved? That would lose them more than they could ever gain."
     Another twist of their mindset and system. The Guild was a force unto themselves; outside their countries' political power structures. No matter how powerful some of these people were, no matter what sort of friends they had in government or merchant industry, they didn't have any influence over the Mediator Guild. It was an organization that was a paramilitary force, a police force and a judicial system all existing in coexistence with, yet independent of, the Rris governments. It was an ancient institution that seemed to have deeply-set roots spreading through Rris society. A charter existed that gave them jurisdiction over Governments; an agreement that said that under certain conditions the Guild had authority to demand anything they required, to requisition supplies, equipment, transport or personnel, even to enforce the charter through physical means.
     My arrival had precipitated those conditions quite nicely.
     In a world where communications moved at the speed of a fast messenger, it'd taken the Guild some time to realize what was happening; even longer to figure out what sort of repercussions the changes that were going on around me might have. When it did catch up, the resultant convulsions just about tore the Guild in half and very nearly killed me. It got me caught up in a nasty little internal power struggle, blackmailed me into silence and cooperation and saddled me with those two minders. Given what I knew of human history the thought of an organization holding that sort of power just seemed wrong. I'd seen what could happen, how some overly-dedicated fanatics could splinter the foundations of a society.
     But a government was just another sort of organization, wasn't it?
     I shuddered. "Just let them know that if they try anything, I will pull their skin off and play tunes on their ribs."
     She snorted, unimpressed, "Oh, very subtle."
     "Chihirae, if they try anything... let me know. We'll see how much they like to play games."
     "Games," she shuddered. Her glass was set down and she took up her two-tined fork again, skewering a mouthful of meat.
     "Look, I know it's your life and you want to fend for yourself, but some of these people won't play fair. They won't hesitate to call in friends or favors to further their own ends. You should you know you've got someone on your side if you ever need it. Speak softly, but carry a bigger stick. With a nail in it."
     She smiled distractedly at that. Her next chunk of meat remained impaled on the end of her fork. "You want me to go with you?"
     "It's entirely up to you. Nothing anyone else says should change that."
     "It would be recompense to you?"
     "Ah, what?" I didn't understand that. "Recompense? For... what?"
     "This," the morsel of meat waved around, taking in the food, the room... "All you've done for me. You would expect me to come with you?"
     I know my jaw dropped and I gaped like an idiot, absolutely lost for words.
     "Oh," her ears twitched back as she noticed my reaction. "From your expression, I take it that's not what you meant?" she ventured.
     "I... no," I finally croaked.
     "Oh," she finally popped the meat into her mouth and champed noisily, looking a little relieved. "I thought you expected it of me. That was why you asked about my meeting?"
     "No," I said again, shocked and hurt and more than a little off balance at how the question had been interpreted. "No, no it's not... Chihirae, I would never ask you for... for anything. I would never ask you to do anything against your will."
     And she knew me well enough that something got through there. She stopped chewing, stared at me closely again. After a few seconds she said, "That offended you, didn't it."
     "It... really surprised me."
     "Huhn, very diplomatic," she growled, regarded her food and sighed. "It's one of those moments again, isn't it."
     "I think so," I said quietly.
     One of those moments. Capital 'M' moments. One of those moments between Human and Rris where everything just went off in wildly different directions. We could make similar noises — speak the same language — but that wasn't to say that what went on behind the scenes worked in the same way; that the words we used invoked the same mental processes. Because we're different species — different animals with different senses, different perceptions and different ways of thinking — there were emotions and reactions that were natural in one of us that were completely foreign to the other.
     Love was one of the worst.
     Not in the romantic, love-will-conquer-all, flowery rhetoric, and misty-eyed Hollywood sense, but rather in the real, sluice-of-hormone induced perceptual blinders nature built into humanity to reinforce various relationships. All the affection and protection I felt toward Chihirae was that — love. What she felt in return was... it was something else.
     I could use a comparison with a dog and its human owner here, but I won't. That would be demeaning to someone: either me or Rris, I'm not sure. They aren't human so what they feel isn't what I feel. It can't be. They can't love. There was friendship or affection or protectiveness or something akin to that; something that stopped her just leaving, something as strong as love, but it wasn't love. They have relationships, they have offspring and there are close threads between them, but they're not the same familial bonds that I felt in my marrow. For Rris staying with a fixed partner wasn't usual. It wasn't done. It wasn't... normal.
     And I was the odd one out here. I took a slug of wine and winced, swirling the dregs. "Chihirae, I would like you to come. But, it... I can't say that it will be safe. I can't say that it will be easy. The final say is yours."
     "Huhn," she growled again, looking down into her bowl. "I think I'll sleep on that, if there's time?"
     I nodded. "We have a few days. And if you're worried about leaving your work, I'm sure a temporary substitute can be arranged. And the job'll still be there when we get back."
     She tore a chunk of bread and sponged up gravy, still looking uncertain.
     "And you won't owe me anything," I added. "You'll never owe me."
     Her muzzle twitched, rows of v shapes furrowing the bridge of her broad nose, "Rot," she said as her ears flicked back. "I thought... No. No, I didn't. It was thoughtless. How about this though: I can help you with that list. Would you accept that?" she sucked her head and looked up at me.
     As attempts to change the subject went, it was pretty transparent. And welcome. "You think I need it?"
     "Mikah, an 'elk with a coat on its feet'?" she prodded.
     "Come on," I shrugged and tipped my glass to her. "You know you want one too."
     She chittered. "I think you can do better than that. Am I that bad a teacher?"
     "If the student is the measure of a teacher, you must be terrible."
     Chihirae screwed her nose up and sniffed, the very picture of an affronted feline. "Sah! Give me shit to sculpt and whatever I sculpt, it will still be shit."
     I laughed out loud, and in the quiet of the house the noise was quite abrupt, quite odd. Outside, wind gusted, bringing the first rattling as sleet batted against the windows.
     And later, I sat at my desk, scowling at the paper on the desk and absently chewing the end of my pen. It'd seemed like such a simple thing to do in a moment of bravado. Just a list made up out of words I knew. But I couldn't write them. There were rules that seemed intuitive to Chihirae that I just didn't get. Was I was functionally dyslexic in Rris? Some time ago, before Chihirae arrived in Shattered Water, I'd been assigned another tutor by the Palace. It'd been an unmitigated disaster. We hadn't gotten along. She'd feared and hated what she thought I was, and for me that attitude was like an abrasive hot sandstorm continually snarling in my face. Esseri, that'd been her name. She was an elderly Rris with an old anger, but the difficulties I'd had learning writing under her tutelage hadn't gone away with a change in teachers. Subject, then predicate and then modifiers to the former, depending upon usage and tense, but those rules seemed so arbitrary. You could write a page and then go back and scratch a few extra marks and completely change the meaning of the content and I couldn't figure out why. I took my best shot at it.
     "That's better," the voice at my shoulder said. A warm body leaned over and a stubby finger with an extruded claw touched the line I'd just scratched out. "You see, it's a possessive; it's future tense, so you have to modify the possessive tense flow like so. That's right. That's good."
     "I think I understand," I ventured. That line was correct, but I wasn't exactly sure exactly what it was I'd done that was right. It seemed that what was right once was wrong in another instance that seemed identical to me.
     "Try with the rest," Chihirae urged. "Just like that."
     I scratched away and she stayed by my side, watching and patiently giving me tips and correcting my mistakes. In the end she'd ended up correcting and rewriting a good part of my best efforts. When it was done, I'd taken the final list to Tich and given it to her along with instructions. She'd received it impassively, glanced over it, and then bowed her head. "Very good, sir," was all she'd said. I remembered crude crayon childhood pictures I'd been so proud of stuck up on the refrigerator and sighed. Was she patronizing me?
     Beyond the drapes and glass the wind blew. Rain or sleet ticked against the windows. Inside was dim and warm. Chihirae was stretched out on my bed, chin propped on one hand as she carefully tapped away at the notebook, the pulsing glow of the screen in the dim room indicating she was flicking through static images. She found it a fascinating toy. Considering it was probably the most valuable item on the face of the planet, there'd have been plenty of Rris who'd have had kittens if they knew she loved just looking through the pictures from another world. They'd have gnawed their own legs off for a chance to just play around with it as she did. She looked up as I came in, her face lit from below by electronic light. "You're done?"
     I sat down beside her, the bed rocking as I settled and laid a hand on her back, absently scratching back and forth. "A, done," I said quietly.
     She arched back, pressing back against my rubbing. "Huhrn, you're still upset?"
     "What? Oh, no... It's not that. It's just fucking humiliating. I mean, it's just a list. I thought it would be easy. I know the words, I just can't put them together on paper. Am I that hopeless?"
     "Not hopeless," she growled and shifted. "My ears. Get behind my ears... There... uhhnn, you see? You're very good at something."
     Despite myself, I smiled. She got inordinate pleasure out of such a simple thing as a good scratch behind the ears. "Somehow, I don't think any of their lordships would be impressed by this."
     An amused sound. "They don't know what they're missing," she rumbled, flexing her shoulders. Under the fur muscles rippled with a flexibility that was literally inhuman.
     "What're you looking at, anyway?"
     "Huhn?" she looked around at me, then angled the notebook so I could see. Pictures. A human woman in a black evening gown walking past a backdrop of photographers. I blinked. That was one of the dozens of stock image directories. Chihirae tapped the screen and images flicked to a brunette in casual wear, to Botticelli's Birth of Venus, a render of a redhead on a racing bike, to a blonde in a swimsuit, to another blonde not in a swimsuit. Stock cheesecake collection. Chihirae tipped her head. "They're all females, aren't they?"
     "Well, yes," I said. "But they're not all real. There are paintings and artificial images there."
     "Oh," she said, cocked her head at the screen. I ruffled the fur on her back, idly scratching fingers up and down her spine.
     "They are attractive?"
     "A lot of them, very. That's why their pictures are there. For a lot of them it's their job: being pretty in a picture."
     "Pretty? They look bald and gangly," she sniffed, then pushed the laptop aside and rolled over onto her back. Amber eyes blinked up at me from a tawny-grey furry face. "You still miss them?"
     "Them? No. I never knew them," I ruffled the longer tufts on her chest, drawing swirls through the speckled greyish fur. Her winter coat was growing in and her pelt was noticeably thicker than it'd been a month ago. She blinked slowly, lazily.
     "Your mate then?"
     "A," I nodded, scratching her like a shaggy dog. "I still think of her and..." And family, and friends, and countless other things that were lost forever. "Never mind."
     "Huhn," she growled softly, laying back and relaxing under the scratching. "Mikah, about what I said downstairs, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."
     "No," I said. "You did."
     "Mikah..."
     "That's what you'd usually say under the circumstances, a? To other Rris? It would be the right thing to do?"
     Her eyes closed. Her ribs tensed, then dropped in a sigh and eventually she confessed with a squeak, "A."
     My finger traced a line down her breastbone, feeling the hard bone beneath the fell and skin. "So you did what would normally be right. I can't fault you for that."
     She cracked an eyelid, showing a line of glittering amber. "I should have known better."
     I grinned. "I know that feeling. But what you are always beats what you try to be. Trying to act the way you think I want you to... I understand why you do it. I also understand how impossible it can be."
     "This is how you feel when you say those strange things?"
     "This is how you feel when I say those strange things?" I retorted and scratched her belly.
     She chittered.
     "Chihirae, it's not you who's walking against the wind here. I'm out of place, not you. It's always going to be weird for me when Rris say things like that. I can't properly understand it or the thoughts behind it. But, I guess I can learn to accept it."
     She caught after my hand. Her stubby, hairy fingers caught mine; leathery palms creased against my skin while her claws were sharp points in her fingertips as she squeezed. "I wouldn't ask any more," she said in a voice that rumbled like a growl. "But, you stopped scratching me."
     I laughed, quietly in the still warmth, leaned over and raked her pelt. Chihirae went bonelessly limp, head lolling with the pink tip of her tongue protruding as I rubbed and scratched here and there through inch-thick fur and fell, across the six buttons of her nipples. A completely otherworldly body sprawled, luxuriating, arching slightly when I scratched somewhere right. Just scratching and laughing and enjoying ourselves for a pleasant time.
     Her kilt buckle was a momentary hindrance, a few seconds to lay the fabric open. Her crotch fur was thick, tufted. Her half-closed eyes glittered, glimmering threads visible below her eyelids. Her pink tongue flicked around her chops. Her hips shifted as her legs spread. Her chest heaved with an intake of breath as I stroked there, seeking, pressing, stroking, sliding in. Her muscles were alive, an alien body fever-hot around my fingers, clenching. She started to reach for me, then yanked her hand back and grabbed fistfuls of the duvet. I moved my own hand, slowly, taking my time, delighting in teasing her like that. Her muscles tightened, tendons creaking. Her claws popped through the fabric as my fingertips found that spot deep in her heat, as my other hand scratched along her chest, her ribs, her belly, ruffling fur and raking blunt nails across sensitive places. Her hips pushed back. She made noises, not quite words, teeth flashed in the light. Her body tensed, spasmed, squeezed like an organic vice. Her exultant yowl cutting through the whine of the wind outside.
     For a while she lay sprawled there among the white folds of the eiderdown, panting, a stupidly satisfied expression on her face. I sat by her and stroked ruffled fur smooth and she grinned up at me. "Clever fingers," she growled. I grinned back and she chittered and wriggled against my touch, "Why'd you stop?"
     It was sometime later that we thought to close the door.

Early morning. I dragged myself out from under hot covers into a chilly bedroom. Pipes rattled as the radiators warmed up, but they still had some work to do. Behind me, the lump in the bed snuffled, complained incoherently and buried itself deeper. Opening the curtains revealed swirling grey and anemic dawn light outside.
     Fog. And cold. Great. I winced and started to dress: shorts and moccasins.
     As always, Tich met me at the foot of the stairs. "Good morning, sir."
     "Morning, Tich."
     "Grilled grouse, eggs, grain cakes, bread, cheese, and tomato juice are acceptable for your breakfast, sir?"
     "Sounds good," I said. "Has the messenger been yet?"
     "A short time ago," she said. "Dispatches were sent to the tailors and other crafters you requested. There was an arrival: a missive from the palace, sir. Official documents with the royal seal granting you Palace authority for this equipping, allowing you to requisition any supplies or services you may require. On Palace expenses."
     "Unlimited?"
     "Within reason, I believe, sir."
     "They're serious."
     "Not uncommon, sir."
     "I'll try and read them over breakfast. Oh, and her ladyship seems to be trapped in bed. She might need a wake-up call."
     "Very good, sir. And I'll ensure that the sheets are changed again. As a matter of note, sir, it might be an idea to acquire some more linen. Washing doesn't dry as fast in this weather and the staff have encountered difficulties in keeping up with the laundry."
     "Ah," I felt a hot flush creep up my neck at the wording there. "Okay, do that. It's not... disturbing them?"
     "Not to my knowledge, sir," she said. "I believe they find it's entertaining."
     "They... what?" I shouldn't have asked.
     "Entertaining, sir."
     "Entertaining," I echoed. "How?"
     I believe betting is involved."
     I stared. "Betting?"
     "Oh, on how long you'll go on for," she ticked off on a finger, "on what her ladyship cries out next..."
     The hot flush reached the top floor and I didn't have any words.
     She paused, cocked her head, perhaps realizing that perhaps that news had a bit more impact on me than it would've on a Rris. "They are discreet," she added. "There won't be any gossip beyond these walls."
     "Oh," I squeaked. "Good."
     She hesitated again, giving me a curious look, as if waiting for me to say something else. "If that's all, sir?" she enquired.
     "A," I choked, my whole face feeling hot and tight. She ducked her head and silently padded off toward the staff areas.
     Crap. It was too early in the morning; my brain wasn't ready for dealing with Rris weirdness like that, not at that time. And the Rris didn't have coffee or anything with a decent caffeinated kick to it. A run in freezing mist would have to do.
     There was movement in the corner of my eye as I walked through the living room: a flash of tawny fur and dark clothes. "You heard?" I asked the Mediator as she fell in behind me.
     "A," Jenes'ahn said mildly. She was wearing one of those Mediator coats that morning; a long and heavy, travelled-stained dark grey leather thing. If she was wearing that, the weather must've been getting cooler.
     "Is it true? She wasn't joking?" I realized how stupid that sounded even as I said it.
     "Three times last night," she said. "I'm up almost a full finger."
     I grimaced. "Gambling on duty... isn't there some sort of rule about that?"
     "No."
     Figures.
     I hammered my frustrations into submission with exercise. Freezing fog and morning temperatures were like a splash of frigid water across my entire body and had much the same effect as a jug of espresso as I turned the annoyance and embarrassment into a couple of dozen laps of the field. It was embarrassing. Rather, it was embarrassing for me. For the Rris... I'd thought they might be offended or scandalized by what we did, but Tich had called it entertainment. They're open about most bodily functions, and to them sex isn't anything to get overly excited about. Rris females are fertile once a year. Around about springtime they come into season and until that time the males aren't sexual active or even interested in any way beyond academic or amusement. Something to do with scents or pheromones as best I can understand; the males just can't get it up without the scent of a woman, so to say. Until that stimulus is provided — or until some sort of chemical substitute is used — the males have all the sexual drive of a bollard. I was capable of performing all year round and they found that unusual and therefore a source of entertainment. Chaeitch ribbed me about it; made jokes. The staff didn't seem to be much different.
     Punish them? Dock pay? Fire them? At first I was tempted, really tempted. But I ran and thought and cooled off. By their lights any action like that would be over-reacting. It wasn't their fault that they had good hearing; and, granted, in the heat of passion Chihirae did sometimes make noises that weren't entirely unlike a chainsaw hacking through aluminum sheeting; and what was going on was certainly something out of the ordinary so of course they would take an interest in it. Not just the fact that we... that we weren't the same, there was more than that, more than just the unusual time of year. Their women are capable of climax, but very few of them ever actually experienced it. Their sessions with their males were energetic and numerous and over very fast. Too fast for them to get off on. It was a physical thing. I did things... differently. I didn't have the recuperative powers of their males, but I could last longer. Long enough for their women to get something out of it.
     I'd asked Chihirae why she didn't use a substitute: a vibrator or something. She'd been seriously perplexed about the idea of having sex with, as she put it, 'furniture'. She just found the entire concept strange, as she did kissing, haircuts, and hoola hoops. Masturbation simply didn't seem to appeal to them. I didn't really understand why. Perhaps for them it was something along the same lines as the reason you can't tickle yourself.
     I grimaced as I sweated my way through a series of chin-ups on the icy bars, remembering some really awkward and convoluted conversations I'd had with Chihirae about a lot of those things. She'd thought a lot of it hilarious, other stuff incomprehensibly bizarre.
     Different? Certainly. Weird? Perhaps. Wrong? That wasn't so clear cut. There would be Rris and Humans who would condemn what we did; each for reasons the other species would probably find outlandish or absurd. And there'd certainly been a time when I'd thought along those lines; when Rris had been alien and inhuman beyond all measure. And then, one wet and rainy night in a strange city a friend had reached out and I'd accepted. It'd been terrifying and exhilarating and confusing and painful and reason had never entered into it. I'd clutched at a warm body in the dark as if she were a lifeline and she'd responded and suddenly all those reasons had seemed far away and insignificant. Funny how a few years and desperate immersion in a society can change your perspective.
     I dropped from the bars, breathing hard and rolling my shoulders, feeling for a twinge from a knot of scar tissue. Blood sang, my muscles ached and the sweat chilled on my body, steaming away into the morning mist under the old trees along the edge of the meadow. Early sunlight diffused through the grey, turning the world a dull pearl. Somewhere out there ice clattered on the lakeshore.
     Perhaps the problem wasn't with the staff. Perhaps it was just another perspective I had to learn to adjust to. That might be possible to do. Learned behavior could be un-learned or changed. It was the hard-wired stuff that was harder to deal with. But sometimes it was difficult to tell which was which.
     When I turned back to the house, Jenes'ahn moved from where she'd crouched under the tree, moving from a quietly-hunkered figure to a loping predator falling in behind me. Her long coat tails swished about her peculiar ankles in time with the swaying of her own tail. Halfway there the nagging uncertainties were too much. I stopped walking. She also stopped, cocking her head.
     "What should I do?" I asked, hating myself.
     "About?" she said.
     "The staff," I said. "Should I be concerned about this?"
     Her head canted to one side, studying me. "For what reason?"
     "Because I don't know if what they did is considered wrong or improper or impolite. Because I don't know what would be considered an... an appropriate response."
     "Huhn," she huffed a cloud of breath that glittered as white as her sharp little teeth. "You mock me, then you ask me for advice in something like this."
     "Yes."
     The Mediator's eyes narrowed to amber slots and she canted her head, to one side and then the other. "This is nothing to do with my duties. Why should I help?"
     I looked toward the house, a dark bulk in the mist. "Because I might end up doing something that punishes some hard-working people for what is, by their lights, no real reason."
     Jenes'ahn chewed on that. Then she said, "Kings and countries call for your advice and yet in something like this, you really don't know?"
     "If I did I wouldn't have to resort to this."
     "What don't you understand?"
     It was cold. It was freezing, and so was I. "I'm their employer so I can do what I want. That's easy. Doing what's considered right isn't. My kind would regard such indiscretions as you would... as you would consider intruding uninvited on another's private home."
     "Huhn," amongst Rris that was extremely impolite. "Punishment would be normal?"
     "Of some sort. It would be intended to... establish authority in the household. It is, I think, another thing that's different between us." Alpha male and group hierarchies, something else Rris society did differently. It echoed throughout their social structure. "I don't know if those actions would be considered appropriate here."
     Another growl, a flash of a wrinkled muzzle before she turned to glare toward the house. "They wouldn't be. It's a minor incident. Tichirik saw no issue; that's why she mentioned it. Anything more and she would control it. It's her duty."
     "Umm," I nodded. Frost crackled in my beard and in my hair where sweat had frozen. "You're right."
     "So, what will you do?"
     "Now? Get warm; Get breakfast. About that other problem? I think I'll have to make sure the door's closed."
     "Perhaps a muzzle for her ladyship," the Mediator suggested drily from behind me. My heart slammed and I stopped walking. "Some advice from me, constable," I said to the cold air, really trying to stay calm, "Never, ever say that around her. Not even in jest. Not where she might possibly hear you. Understand? It's not something she wants or needs to be reminded of. Is that clear?"
     A pause. The early sun climbed in the east, like a watery poached egg through the grey dawn. Winter treetops cast crepuscular rays across the meadow, light and dark stretching through the mist like insubstantial fingers. Away in the distance someone was hammering metal and the sound carried in the stillness.
     "I apologize," Jenes'ahn said. I'm sure she was staring, but I didn't turn. I just started walking again.
     There was still a snoring lump in the bed when I went in for a shower. It took a while under a stream of hot water to get the feeling back in my ears and toes. When I emerged, Chihirae was slouched on the edge of the bed, fur tousled and matted, scratching herself and blinking blearily.
     "Good morning," I said and then smirked. "You're looking bright and ready."
     She yawned, dropping her jaw and curling a pink tongue, then smacked her jaw a few times and focused on me with ears askew. "Rot you, Mikah, it's indecent to be so active so early."
     "Hey, you worked with farm kids so you should be used to it." I stopped on my way across the room to scratch behind a tufted ear that was still half inside-out.
     "Ah," she rumbled leaning into it for a second before drawing away and batting at my hand. "Hai, no. Not now."
     I grinned and headed for the closet. Clothing wasn't something I had a lot of. When I'd arrived here it'd been late summer and my wardrobe of human-made clothes reflected that. The heavy stuff I had was Rris-made and for the coming trip it wasn't going to be heavy enough.
     Chihirae stood and stretched, arms one at a time and then legs, one at a time. She rolled her shoulders in a disturbingly fluid manner and then looked down at herself and snorted. "Ah, rot, I need a bath. A proper bath. And grooming. And food." She grimaced and rubbed her crotch, "And I think I'm still sore from last night."
     "Too much of a good thing?" I grinned.
     She grinned back, mockingly, "Too much of a some-thing."
     "I don't remember hearing you complaining," and neither did anyone else, apparently.
     "Huhr, the hairless beast thinks highly of himself."
     "Credit where credit's due," I retorted as I pulled out trousers, tunic and undershirts. Rris made, which meant buttons and laces. Nothing wrong with Rris tailors, despite clothing not being such a fundamental necessity for Rris. They just didn't have access to things like elastic, silk, synthetics and microfibres. So they had to do things other ways.
     "Yet he can't even write a simple list," she chittered.
     "Oh, cold. That's just cold."
     A hand touched me, stroking down from the nape of my neck and gently, gently down over the numb stripes of scar tissue lacing my back. I twitched; I hadn't heard her approach. "What's your business this early? That list?"
     "A," I said, starting to dress. "That and some other things I've got to take care of. We've only got a few days, so I've got to get them done quickly. There's the tailor and leatherworkers... they'll need as much time as I can give them."
     "You be careful," she said. "Remember there're those who aren't used to you. Mind your teeth. Don't lock eyes or stand close or move too fast. Don't make those storekeepers too nervous."
     "I think they're making too much money off me for that," I laughed. "They're pretty accustomed to me by now."
     "Huhn. Money and guards might buy politeness to your face but it won't change thoughts."
     I looked at her, sobering. "You know something I don't?"
     She swept her hand in a negative, but an ear twitched back: she looked uncomfortable. "No, but... there're those questions they asked me. Mikah, people — powerful people — are aware of you and they're thinking about what you can do."
     My hands stilled. "And some of them might not like the possibilities, a?"
     She waved a little gesture of agreement.
     It wasn't a new concern. I'd worried about it; the local government and my protectors had worried about it. But for Chihirae to be nibbling at it... I'd tried to keep that sort of thing from her. She knew I had enemies, that fact was perfectly obvious, but I'd tried to keep some of the grubbier sides of the politiking from her: the under-table appeals and outright bribe attempts from merchants and nobles, the remoras and hanger-ons jockeying for tidbits of information, the insistent petitioners with some pretty bizarre ideas. If those sorts of undercurrents were reaching her, that meant things were bubbling pretty close to the surface.
     I just gave her a smile and did up the buttons on the heavy shirt. The smile was forced, but there was probably little chance of even her picking that up. "I know," I said. "I will be careful. And, hell, I've got a Mediator following me around everywhere. They must be good for something."
     She flicked an ear and stepped in closer, her furry hands with their short, single-jointed fingers mixing with mine to help me with the buttons. "Just, be careful." "Hey," I smiled down at her muzzled face, "Aren't I always?"
     She bit me.
     Breakfast was hot and filling. The grain cakes were a Rris dish like oatmeal hotcakes, with bits of meat in them. Along with melted butter and genuine maple syrup they tasted as good as they smelled and got me in a mood to deal with whatever the rest of the day had in store.

The carriage swayed as it rattled off down the drive. I exhaled a breath that hung in the frigid air and regarded Jenes'ahn through it. She was sitting in the front seat kitty-corner from me, looking out the window, but she very quickly noticed me staring. The gaze she leveled back was amber and inscrutable. She cocked her head.
     "Did you know about those people asking Chihirae questions?" I asked.
     "A," she said.
     "Is there anything to it? Are they dangerous? Should I be concerned?"
     She tipped her head the other way. The carriage swung around onto the street, sunlight washing in across her and she looked out the window again. "They are potentially dangerous. You should be aware that they are taking increasing interest."
     "Will they harm her?"
     "Those know you keep her close, but most don't realize what sort of emotional value she has to you. There is speculation: Paying off obligation, teaching you, even as entertainment, they think those are the reasons she's there, but few suspect that there is actual emotional weight."
     'Emotional weight'... was that how they saw it? "You know what they're asking."
     "For information about you, about your knowledge," she said, looking bored.
     They knew. Chihirae hadn't told them, but they knew.
     "You're alright with that?"
     "If by that you mean do we condone it then, yes. They can ask. She can refuse. We are... alright with that."
     "And if they try to hurt her?"
     "They won't. She has the Guild's attention. These worthies won't tempt that," she said and yawned. I got a profile view of her jaw dropping and tongue curling, then snapping shut.
     My own jaw clenched. She was valuable, that was what Jenes'ahn was saying. Those local bigshots might not've known what she was to me, but the Guild certainly did. And they used her as a way to ensure I toed their line. They'd never actually threatened her. They didn't have to: if anything happened to me, she'd be superfluous to requirements — out on the street — so they just had to make sure that I knew that without Guild protection I could be in trouble. But they also knew that if anything happened to her then the Guild wouldn't have leverage on me, wouldn't be able to make sure I agreed to do as they directed. A nasty web of confusing interpretations of alien intentions on all side.
     Morning sunlight washed across the Mediator's face, highlighting the feline profile in a white halo of glowing fur. I turned away and stared out my own window. I didn't like to admit it, but the Mediators disturbed me. A lot. So highly focused on their duties that everything else was secondary. I had to wonder what sort a childhood produced something like that.
     The carriage rattled along.
     This time the first visit was to more commercial parts of town — a district situated further away from the river and closer to one of the radial plazas that Shattered Water sprawled around: a neighborhood in the wedge between two avenues radiating from one such plaza. The side streets weren't nearly as broad as the tree-lined avenues, but in that neighborhood they were clean and cobbled, and also damned slippery in the icy weather. New gas lamps on fluted black iron posts stood along the streets, snuffed for the day but providing a glimmer of light at night. To either side the two and three story buildings were old sandstone; wood and plaster; or sometimes newer brick with peaked roofs of proper tile, all well-built and prosperous. Colors contrasted markedly with the grey skies — drab plaster and stonework were painted in brightly garish hues that often clashed with my sense of color harmony. Murals of all shapes and sizes and quality abounded, from a silhouette of a cub with a hoop to a three story strip of geometric orange and green shapes to tromp l'oeil of doors or windows. Some were painted, others formed from mosaics of iridescent glazed tiles or even bits of colored glass. Facades were decorated with embellishments: columns and ornamental moldings, frescoes and cornices, arches and architraves. Windows were glazed with panes of varying quality and stores were announced by painted signs and engraved plaques at doors. Things were made here, but there were no factories; it was a place of craftsmen and artisans.
     First stop was my tailor. Word had gone ahead so they were open and expecting us. Parking wasn't a problem and I stepped down from the chilly carriage into chilly morning air right outside the shop. As stores went the premises weren't anything spectacular: an old threestory building of stone and plaster. The ground floor fronted by a wide mullioned window of old glass panes offering a watery view of a dark interior and alongside that a wooden door painted in peeling green. A pair of the guards assigned to me were waiting there, stepping aside as I entered. I ducked under the low lintel and then stood for a second to let my eyes adjust.
     To me the interior was poorly lit. Most of that light came in through the old, warped, greenish-tinted lites in the front window. It didn't travel far, casting a bright rectangle of discolored morning sunlight and caustics on a polished wooden floor that glared and left the back of the shop in what my eyes perceived as gloom. I stood in the light and blinked, at bolts of cloth laid out on counters and tables; at sheets hanging from polished brass rods; at cords and strips of fabric samples spread out for inspection. Suspicious figures lurking in the corners resolved into the sectioned torsos of Rris dressmakers dummies, crudely formed things dressed in examples of what was fashionable: waistcoats and kilts and slitted tunics. The imitation blue jeans and T-shirts hanging behind a counter were a glaringly incongruous fad, and also horribly expensive.
     "Sir, welcome again." The Rris who greeted me was a big Rris with grey fur and nervous hands and ears. I'd dealt with him before: all my Rris-made clothing came from that place. Chaeitch used his services and had enquired whether he would be willing to do work for an exotic client. Turned out that if the price was right he'd have made a tutu for a llama. Still, despite reassurances he'd been so nervous around me he couldn't hold his measures straight and had only relaxed a little when he found I didn't bite and paid very well for good service.
     Still, Chihirae had been right: I didn't really know what they were thinking. They might act friendly, but what was going on inside their heads wasn't something I could read. That was a lesson that'd been beaten into me.
     The guards outside kept the general public away and Jenes'ahn lurked in the background while we did business. I didn't need dance apparel for a draft animal, but what I did require was more clothing, and of heavier and more unusual designs than most Rris used. And I needed them quickly. Warm shirts and pants; quilted and otherwise as well as underclothes and some more formal attire that I could use in those meetings in sub-zero locations that the Rris were quite comfortable in. The designs weren't a problem, but the turnaround time was. He was very good at his job and had several apprentices, but their strength was quality, not speed.
     He listened to the requirements and then to when I needed them. If he'd been human, he'd have blanched. "Sir," he choked and looked from me to the Mediator. "Sir, I... that is..."
     "Problem, a?" I asked.
     He looked miserable.
     "You can't do it in the time, right?" I sighed.
     Obviously he hadn't wanted to broach the subject. "Sir, the items required... we can certainly make them for you, but they are not usual. To produce all of them by the end of the week... Sir, I have but two hands. It would be possible, but I believe the... ah, the cost... would..."
     He trailed off. I'd already guessed what he was getting at: I'd been in a similar business.
     "I can have it fast, cheap, or well-made. Any two of those, a?"
     I could see him mentally parsing that, then his ears wilted. "A. Yes, sir. Exactly, sir."
     "Fast and well-made then," I said. "A reasonable charge for a good job is fair. Bill what you will."
     He considered that, adding money and available hours and the fact he could bill the palace. When his ears came up again I could almost hear a cash register ring. "Very good, sir," he said. "They will be ready, then."
     He'd subcontract, that was damn obvious. If it was to a competitor, that could be trouble, but he seemed sure the wares would be ready. He'd be held to that promise, and he knew it.
     Oh, back home there were places where you could wander in in the morning and come back in the evening to collect a tailored suit complete with spare pair of trousers. Things worked a bit differently here. Slower. There wasn't as much demand for full sets of suits, or any sort of clothing for that matter. Most of the shop's work involved what might be considered designer wear for the affluent; the sort of extravagant shows of wealth that were popular amongst the upper crust at functions and royal balls. If they needed extra material, it took a long time to find a supplier, order it, and get it delivered. The tailor and his apprentices relied on their skills to do their jobs, but they had to do those jobs by hand. Sewing machines did exist in this world, but they were pretty rudimentary and brutal things more suited to sail making than the finer points of tailoring for the upper classes. That could be changed, but not there and then.
     I paid half the required amount up front, counting out the elaborately stamped sticks of silver Rris coinage so appropriately coined fingers. The tailor and his apprentices did the necessary measuring quickly and efficiently, concentrating very hard on their jobs and quite obviously trying to ignore Jenes'ahn standing nearby. Fifteen minutes of poking and cutting and measuring and they were done and we were on our way.
     Our next stop wasn't in such a good neighborhood. We had to head up river, to an outlying warehouse district. It was wall-to-wall coal and stone and brick and timber yards, with stock yards and slaughterhouses thrown in for flavor. The streets had been cobbled once, but the stones had been cracked and displaced by the iron-bound wheels on heavy wagons and carts they'd never been intended to bear. Jolting over them was enough to rattle my teeth.
     The place we wanted was in a narrow street containing a mixture of several residential enclaves, small businesses and stores, tucked behind a wrought-iron gate. And by the eyewatering ammonic pall hanging around the street, it was quite close to slaughter yards and tanneries.
     That sinus-opening ammonia reek was more pronounced as we stepped through the open gates into a small courtyard. It'd possibly been a stable yard once, but now we were in a flagstone courtyard bustling with busy Rris and cluttered by frames and racks of all descriptions. They filled the yard, protruding from the walls and standing in rows on the flagstones. Strips of leather or whole animal pelts hung from most of them, either stretched out or just hung from hooks. Different sizes and shapes and colors of hides ready for working. Staggered rows of sunken, tile-lined vats were set to one side of the court, tubs stained with Technicolor patinas of dried dyes layers deep. To the rear of the court — set against the building there — was a workshop area: a low, sloping roof of clay tiles covering benches and scraping areas and racks of iron and wood tools, the purpose of most of them a complete mystery to me.
     Rris there saw us — saw me — as we walked in and work ground to a halt, workers stopping where they were and leaning on paddles and workbenches to stare. One of them hastily ducked away through a set of low doors to return within seconds with the owner and master. She hurried out to greet us, wiping her hands on a scrap of cloth grubby enough that the act of rubbing it was probably making the fabric marginally cleaner. An older woman in a stained leather apron, stocky and with some interesting scars lacing through the fur of her lower left arm.
     "Respects," she greeted as she hustled up, with the tip of her tail flicking and ducking her head in a way that was more nervous than deferential. "Ma'am. Sir. So good you choose to patronize my establishment again."
     I nodded in return, carefully not smiling. "You did good work last time."
     Her ears twitched. "Thank you, sir. I'm glad our efforts meet with your approval."
     "And no good work goes unpunished: we have some more for you."
     Her eyes flicked to the Mediator and back to me again and her ear twitch was a little less certain. "Ah, thank you, sir?"
     "I need more foot coverings. Different from the ones you made before. Also gloves and headgear. And I need them fast. By the end of the week."
     She flinched again, but this time it was startlement. "That is short notice, sir."
     "You can do it?" I asked.
     "I believe so, sir... but, I need to know a bit more. I can't make blind promises about this. Please, come into the shop and we can see what's required."
     The shop itself was through a battered little door in a stone wall that was otherwise bare except for a few slits for windows. Inside was quite different from the clean affluence of the tailors. It was more like a warehouse, with rows of goods stacked perilously high. Those windows were little more than arrow-slits in width, filled with columns of dusty bulls eye panes casting wavery, watery light that would've been reminiscent to looking up from the bottom of a pond. Smells of leather and ammonia and chemicals and dust and sawdust mingled and contrasted with each other, making me want to sneeze. We followed her over creaking floorboards, past dimly lit isles of towering stacks of boxes and crates and shelves of dusty produce. Hides and pelts from every kind of beast you could imagine: bison and deer and elk and bear and beaver and muskrat and skunk and... others.
     Workbenches had been arranged in a spot where overhead windows cast better light. Tools there were finer than in the shops outside; designed for finer finishing and polishing work. Shavings and scraps of leather littered the worktops along with works in progress: items of clothing, saddles, harnesses and belts. Up on a frame hung behind a workbench were stretched a trio of pelts that were... well, it was obvious what they'd come from — you could still count the fingers. On my last trip she'd seen me staring. Oblivious to my shock, she'd asked if I'd prefer garments made out of that. Very expensive, she'd said. Finest quality, she'd said. I'd declined.
     By Rris lights there was nothing illegal about it; nothing wrong. It was all above-board — a practical and sensible utilization of a resource the owner had no further use for. It wasn't one I needed or desired.
     I showed the craftsman some sketches as well as giving her another look at my current boots. She was fascinated by the composite soles, an almost-indestructible laminate that wasn't going to be possible to replicate in the time available. And I didn't need it: for a set of good snow-boots some thick felt on the sole and woolly llama skin inside would be excellent. For general good-looking cold-weather boots, polished leather with more conventional soles would suffice. Gloves would be heavy llama skin and the hat based along the lines of a classic Russian ushanka. Hell, if you want any good kind of cold-weather gear, go with Russian experience — they really know their shit when it comes to arctic survival.
     She must've noted the way I huddled into my jacket and asked if I was also interested in a heavier coat as well. Had to admire her entrepreneurial spirit, even if it was an attempt to bite off more than she could chew — there was no way they'd be able to also deliver that in time. Besides, I already had something arranged.
     She took more measurements of my feet and hands and head. She made some sketches of her own, as well as tracing outlines onto suitable scraps. Then she had some hurried words with associates or apprentices. Then she said they would be done by the end of the week and named an outrageous price.
     Sure she had to delay other customers, and probably put in over-time, and everything was on the Palace's tab, but it was supposed to be within reason. The last time I'd seen numbers like that I'd been dealing with the hammer-and-saw armed bandits who pass for carpenters here, not buying shoes. I named something marginally less outrageous. By the promptness with which she accepted that price it was probably still quite a bit more than the going rate.
     "For that sort of money I'll be expecting excellent work," I told her.
     She stiffened, her tail lashing. "Sir, if you hadn't wanted excellent, then you wouldn't have come here. Nothing less would leave these doors."
     I nodded, trying not to grin. "I'll hold you to that."
     She huffed and ducked her head. "They will be ready, sir."

"You could have haggled for less," Jenes'ahn observed as the carriage jolted into motion.
     "Probably," I agreed.
     "Why didn't you?"
     "A few reasons: I need the stuff fast and I need it well made. I'm willing to pay for that."
     "You're not paying," she pointed out.
     "Ah, that's the other reason. I knew there was one."
     She sighed. "She will also use your patronage to her advantage. You know that?"
     I blinked. "How does that work?"
     The look she gave me was another of those calculating looks, as if she was trying to decide whether I was serious or not. "You are... popular," she eventually said. "Fashionable. The things you do and say, the way you dress, the things you use. People are paying attention. They copy your clothing, the things you do, your home."
     "Are you serious?"
     Jenes'ahn just snorted. Dumb question. "You are aware the craftsmen who worked on that are being paid even larger sums to duplicate that work? Any crafter you commission will be able to [something] off that. That pair will doubtless have a great deal of custom from those following after fashionable trends."
     I shrugged. "If they think boots or gloves designed for me are fashionable or even useful for Rris, then they've more money than sense."
     She gave an exhalation that was somewhere between a hiss and a sigh. "Sometimes, that description is quite apt."
     "If she can get those things put together by the end of the week and do a good job of it, then I consider it money well spent," I said. "If not, then she'll lose my custom. I'm sure she knows people would hear about that as well, so it's in her interest to do the best she can, a?"
     Jenes'ahn looked annoyed: an ear flicked. I took that as point conceded.
     We rattled on through the city. Through quiet side streets where housing compounds turned blank, slit-windowed faces to the world and bare walls were painted in brilliant-hued murals of everyday scenes and abstract patterns; through streets bustling with traffic; along avenues with winter-bare trees; through squares where statues of long-dead Rris heroes lay with bones bared; through daily markets where the air was ripe with smells of burning wood and coal and food and animals and the sounds of Rris voices and discordant music. Past a troupe of entertainers on a makeshift stage, performing something with bells and bright costumes while a crowd of local grubby cubs chittered and yowled at their antics. For over an hour we passed through that city, passed by sights that still twisted something behind my eyes for the sheer juxtaposition of mundanity and inhumanity.
     Smither Industries bustled with activity. In the administration block curious eyes peeked from offices and my footsteps echoed from the tile floors as we passed. This time there was a new addition: the convenient secretary installed in the outer office. She was slight, a grey-furred Rris whose pelt was shot through with silver, elderly. Startling amber eyes in an aluminum-grey furry face framed by white cheek ruffs and tall, tufted ears looked up from a low desk as we stepped into the room, "You would be Ah Mikah," she said briskly, looking from me to the Mediator. "And associate. Please wait. I'll announce you."
     In the corner of my vision I saw Jenes'ahn bristling; she wasn't accustomed to being put on hold.
     "Associate," I muttered. "Heh."
     "Shut it, you."
     Shortly afterwards we were ushered through. The elderly Rris ducked her head and closed the door behind us as we passed though into the cluttered office. Sunlight poured in through the tall windows and gleamed off copper and metal. Dust motes wafted in the streams. I smelled food. And something burnt. "Hi, Chaeitch," I greeted. "Got yourself some help?" I jabbed a thumb toward the doors.
     He looked a little sheepish: a wilting of the ears. "Aesh Smither decided my paperwork needed help. She's supposed to be very good."
     "Certainly efficient," I noted.
     "Efficient," he sighed with a glance toward the door. "A, that she is. I never knew I had so many appointments and bits of paper to sign."
     I grinned openly. Around him I could get away with it. "If she didn't keep you busy she wouldn't have a job, a?"
     "Interesting perspective," he snorted. "Still, she keeps the [riff-raff] at bay. I heard there was some rock-chewer proposing a steam-powered water heater."
     "Steam? As in, using fire to make steam to heat water?"
     "The same."
     "As ideas go that's right up there with powdered instant water — just add water."
     He chittered. "And speaking of riff-raff, you're hungry?"
     "Always. Even my own personal Mediator there is starting to look tempting. Stringy, though."
     Jenes'ahn glared.
     Food had been prepared for a midday meal: strips of smoked pigeon meat, pies of thick-crust rye bread wrapped round more meat and bowls of a hot broth warmed by a little alcohol burner. I sat on a cushion at the knee-high table and sipped at the steaming rich broth while the Rris cautiously lapped. Chaeitch had also had time to gather most of the stuff I'd asked for and the table had an assortment of items laid out on it, not things of Rris manufacture.
     "You want all this?" Chaeitch asked. "They weren't happy to give them up."
     "They've had plenty of time to study them."
     "A. And I think they've come to think of them as... well, as their domain." I'd come into this world with nothing but some camping gear. I'd really only expected to be out for a few late-summer days so I'd been travelling light, with a single hiking pack. In the months before I'd been forced to come face-to-face with the locals my gear had more use than it'd really been intended for, but it'd survived. Since I'd arrived in Shattered Water parts of the kit had gradually been scattered around various institutions, bits going to Smither Industries, to the university as well as to the local chemists guild while Rris scholars and engineers poked and prodded at them with the understanding they wouldn't break them. Chaeitch had done well to get as many items back so quickly.
     My tent, ground sheet and sleeping bag all rolled up into compact bundles designed to strap easily to my pack. The kitchen set, with titanium pot and pan, cup and utensils; my portable gas cooker along with a couple of remaining fire starters and cheap lighter; the Spartan lines of my flashlight, machined from a block of aluminum; a small trowel that could also be used as a hatchet if required; my wallet held some cash and cards and was almost entirely useless here. As was my phone. I could charge it with the same solar pack I used for the laptop, but since it wasn't a GnuChip model, it wasn't even any use as a basic normal radio. The camera in it was a basic single chip with an oil lens — basic consumer level optics that were marginally better than the laptop camera but not what I'd have called quality. My Leatherman toolkit had already been copied and one firm was turning out very expensive hand-crafted clones that were being brought up as fast as they were manufactured, mostly as fashion accessories. The little Leica monocular wasn't as powerful as a Rris spyglass, but the optics were considerably clearer, as were those on the sunglasses. My jacket was an expensive one, made from synthetic spidersilk that meant it was lightweight, warm, breathable, waterproof and extremely tough. Bulletproof tough, to a certain extent. It'd already saved my hide a couple of times.
     I didn't hold any expectation that the Rris would be able to duplicate the devices. A few decades ago a simple flashlight would've been some lead-acid batteries and a filament bulb in a tin tube. Now, my little aluminum block flashlight had a rechargeable graphene nanofibre battery and ultra-bright LED elements that could pump out a few thousand lumens on full power, all made from elements and processes that were a far cry from basic blown glass and chemistry. Even items like the tent were made from exotic synthetic composites which required entire incredibly specialized industries to produce.
     No, they couldn't reproduce them, but they could get some ideas: some new twists on old designs, some new techniques, some new theories and compounds and principals. Zippers and Velcro and layered fabric and modular designs were all concepts that could be adapted and used elsewhere. And now Rris engineers and chemists knew that there were new materials to be found and had set themselves to finding out just what they were and how to make them. I'd heard there'd already been several quite impressive explosions at chemistry facilities around town.
     My laptop, though, that I kept secure. It wasn't just a means to pay my way, it was a little glimpse of home.
     "Everything you need will be provided, you know," Chaeitch said.
     I nodded. "A, but I've made this sort of trip before and these things do come in useful."
     He lapped up a mouthful of broth and flicked an ear. "There were other misgivings about returning this property."
     "Why? They're afraid I was planning on running off?"
     He cocked his head, just eyeing me.
     "They were?" I started.
     "Well, look," he said and gestured at the table. "Opportunity to leave town and take your possessions and your teacher with you. Can you blame them?"
     "And what do you think?"
     "I think you'd come up with less transparent excuse," he grinned again.
     "And where would I go?"
     "There are a few who think you'd just go back to whomever sent you."
     I stared. "That spying rubbish again? I thought that was dead and buried."
     Chaeitch snorted. "It seems there's an endless supply of geniuses who regularly step forward claiming they've figured out that's why you're here."
     "Oh," I sighed. "Wonderful. Does anyone listen to them?"
     "If they're influential enough, someone has to. I believe an office has been created at the Palace that's assigned to things like that. They're quite busy. Lot of paperwork."
     I rolled my eyes and took another mouthful of soup. Chaeitch's offices were heated, but to a Rris standard of 'heated'. The chill made the hot food even better.
     "And I believe that most messages to that office seem to get mislaid," Chaeitch chittered and gestured to the food. "If you want more, the guest is welcome."
     "Thanks. Any news from the university on my medicine kit?"
     "They're still working on it. You know some of your medication is toxic?"
     "To Rris?"
     "A. Slow poison apparently, but quite dangerous. And they're having difficulty finding the kind of mould you mentioned. Apparently there are many different types."
     "I said it probably wouldn't be easy."
     "You did," he conceded, "but ears may not have heard that over the deafening sound of the prey."
     That took me a second to work through. Rris and their idioms — translate them to English and they can sound weird, bloodthirsty. Distillations of a language filtered down through generations of hunting carnivores with all the baggage that entails. "They're not making unreasonable demands?"
     "Just getting... impatient."
     "I had thought scholars above that kind of thing."
     "They have backers."
     "Oh," I mulled that over. Money again. Long live capitalism. "Like that, is it?"
     "A."
     "They're going to be trouble?"
     "Huhnn," he waved a shrug. "Remains to be seen."
     "We've got the Palace behind us, haven't we?"
     "A. And in turn the Palace has them behind it. They offer support to Hirht, so you see the problem."
     "That is... awkward."
     He chittered and bit into another piece of meat, champing enthusiastically. "An understatement. The delay of this journey won't make them any happier."
     Again I chewed over what he'd said. My knowledge of Rris political structure was patchy at best. After three years I'd learned their language and some other essentials, but there were huge gaps in my education. And when dealing with people who thought as well as humans, but not like humans, it was better not to take things for granted. "He's the king, isn't he? I thought that meant he's able to dictate what happens."
     "A. For the most. But he still needs the support of highborn and the merchants and Guilds. They judged him so there is some obligation."
     I tried to figure that out, then had to confess, "I don't understand that."
     "No?" he blinked. "Perhaps we can use this trip to further your political education."
     I grimaced. "You make it sound like such fun."
     A chitter. "Not so enthusiastic, a?"
     "I need to know all that?"
     He waved a shrug. "It could come up. How much do you know about succession? About [something] and [crèche] and the dynasties?"
     "I... there'd been some lessons," I said awkwardly. "They were, ah, interrupted."
     "Huhn, that again," he huffed. "We're going to have to do something about that on this trip."
     "And the politics is relevant?" I asked.
     He hissed quietly, his ears flicking as he threw an amused look over at Jenes'ahn who was toying with my monocular. "He gives us such marvelous ideas and then he says things like that. Mikah, everything going on around you is politics: these gifts you receive; the relationships between countries and personages; trade and diplomacy; dealing with accusations... judging and obligations... You need to know it like a fish needs to know how to swim. Understand?"
     There wasn't a sign of amusement or jocularity about him anywhere. He was serious. "I understand," I sighed into my lunch. "It's just your politics I don't. Things you think are normal are... not, for me."
     "Huhn, that problem again, a?" he said, wrinkling his muzzle before waving a shrug. "Never thought it'd be easy. Rot, at least it will pass the time."
     Jenes'ahn held the little black monocular up to one amber eye, peering at me through it. "A, there'll be plenty of that."
     Yeah. About six hundred kilometers to traverse at maybe thirty klicks a day. On a good day. I tore off a piece of bread and chewed thoughtfully. "How long?" I asked. "Hirht said three months... really that long?"
     "A," Chaeitch got that far-off look he got while thinking. "Sounds about right," he said.
     "Those backers are going to be happy waiting that long?"
     He twitched an ear. "Huhn, no. No they're not."
     Hirht knew that, but he sends me off anyway. I looked at Jenes'ahn again. "Is there some other reason I'm being shipped off? Is there something going on here I should know about?"
     She waved a shrug with one hand, toying with the monocular with the other. "Nothing out of the ordinary."
     Chaeitch snorted. "Nobility squabbling over you; assorted insane individuals clamoring to talk with you; industry petitioning everyone they can with impossible requests and claims. As she said: nothing out of the ordinary."
     "So, it's just a last-hour journey. To another country. Six hundred kilometers. Through winter. Against the wishes of some powerful individuals. For reasons that are best described as political," I said.
     "A," Chaeitch said. "That's about it. It's not going to be any trouble."
     Right. I'd heard that before. "Reassuring. Gives me a warm feeling," I said. "Ah, and that reminds me: that coat you were fixing up for me — I think I'm going to be needing it."
     "I thought you'd want it," he smirked, looking smug. "It's just being finished up. Any other requests?"
     "Colors. Black and white."
     He sat back, lapping at his soup for a moment as he stared back. "Huhn," he said eventually. "I'll see what I can do."
     "Oh, and any news on the University representative yet?"
     "Huhn, I think they're still squabbling over who will get to be stuck with you for a few weeks."
     I winced. "Not popular?"
     He blinked. "Huhn, no. No, that's not the problem. The problem is they all want to go."

There'd been a few hours of more talking. Mostly logistics and planning. They'd asked how many staff I'd be taking along and I hadn't a clue. They were amused. I didn't see the need for someone to do something I was quite capable of doing myself. They pointed out that a lot of the time I'd be too busy to do some of the simple things. In a world like that it's not like you can just nuke a TV dinner or run a load through a washing machine. Servants weren't just an affection of the upper class: for people with things to do, they were essential.
     Later, as the carriage rattled and swayed its way out of the Smither Industries yard: "He was serious about that political thing," I said, leaning on my hand as I stared out the window.
     "Quite," Jenes'ahn said.
     "Is it really necessary?"
     Silence. I turned my attention to the Mediator. She was regarding me with one eye narrowed. "Tell me," she eventually said, "does anything about this journey strike you as unusual?"
     I frowned. "It's a bit abrupt?"
     She sighed, white condensation momentarily fogging in front of her. "This particular time, Mikah. 'When winter sets'. It's a part of the game as old as it's been played. It's [something]."
     "I don't know that word."
     "Putting some uncertainty into things. Allowing some flexibility. [Ambiguity], you know that concept?"
     Ambiguity? "A. I think so."
     "'When winter sets'," she said again and snorted. "Poetic dramatics. It allows some deniable choice in arrivals or departures; it means nobody knows exactly when you'll move."
     I stared at her. "Don't you think you're... examining this too much?"
     Copper-colored eyes leveled back at me. "You should be wondering if I wasn't examining it enough."
     I shook my head. "How do you sleep at night?"
     "With a loaded pistol."
     I started to laugh before I realized, "Oh for Christsake... You're serious."
     "Of course."
     I leaned back into the overstuffed leather seat. "You're only not paranoid if they really are out to get you, you know?"
     "What? What does that mean?"
     "A life living like that? Working for the Guild gives you uncertainty and a gun in your bed? And how often has it even been necessary?"
     "Three times," she said promptly.
     That threw me. "What?"
     "Three times," she said quietly, without blinking. "It's been used three times."
     I didn't say anything. Her muzzle twitched, as if a flea had bitten and she turned her attention back to the window. "First time was up north," she continued in a voice that wasn't much more than a growl. "Just a journey between two towns. We were camped one night and some bandits tried to take what we had.
     "Next was in a small town. There'd been accusations of embezzlement by a military garrison commander. It hadn't seemed serious, but she got nervous enough to hire some halfdrunken scavengers to get rid of me. They came to the inn at night.
     "Third was..." she gave a quick shake of her head and her muzzle creased to bare white teeth at me. "It was in Open Fields."
     I sighed. "It was another Mediator, a?"
     She hissed and leaned back, crossing her arms in a gesture that meant a few things in human body language and a few other things in Rris. I decided it might be an idea not to press the issue.
     By the time we got back home the day was mostly done. The evening was biting cold, nipping at exposed skin. Overcast, heavy with bruised nimbus, covered the sky all the way to the horizon where the last of the sunlight was a golden line beneath the dark lid. It just made the leaden clouds seem even darker. I spent a few minutes on the edge of the meadow, watching the light fade. When I turned away Jenes'ahn was standing a few steps behind. She sniffed the air. "Snow," she proclaimed.
     Yeah, right. Judge, jury and now the met service all in one.
     Chihirae was home and greeted me at the door. Jenes'ahn retired for the night, her partner taking over his shift. Dinner that night was a Rris version of pot pie: a shell of something like a heavy pita pastry filled with a thick barley and wine stew and at least three kinds of meat that I could discern. The cook had made concessions with the addition of vegetables and the wine was a very expensive vintage from the Muddy River area. Chihirae ate enthusiastically, champing noisily as she told me about her day. More adults were trying to get their children into her class because some of what she was teaching was quite different from other teachers. I guess some of them were hoping for a better education for their kids, but I'm sure quite a few were hoping that their kids might get taught something they could use commercially. So far they hadn't found anyone who'd admitted a cub who wasn't actually their offspring, but that day probably wasn't too far off. She asked about my day, but really, her's sounded a lot more enjoyable.
     Afterwards there was time for some peace and quiet. If there's one advantage to living in a society without electronic communications, that's being able to get out of touch and stay out of touch. No phone calls, no emails or IMs or texts coming in from the office at stupid hours; no late-night calls asking for assistance with problems a retarded chimpanzee could solve. Chihirae and I had a couple of hours to sit and watch some videos: a couple of episodes of Planet Earth documentaries, then the movie Sacrosanct. In the gloom of the study we lounged on floor cushions and snacked on popcorn and oddly flavored wines and watched stories from another world. Multicolored light flickered and threw shadows across the bookcases lining the walls. She leaned against me, a warm weight against my side. I translated and answered her questions.
     Before bed I had time to do a bit more work on Chaeitch's portrait, refining the charcoal sketch a little more from other sketches and some digital pictures I'd taken of him. As I shaded patches of detail in dark charcoal I wondered about painting, but that would entail getting to learn the Rris oil paints. Not just using them, but making them from scratch — no art-supply shops here. Perhaps I could sub-contract. I did know of a Rris artist who worked in the media. Perhaps I could hire him to mix the paints. Or would that be an insult? Did I need assistants just for that job?
     Tich stopped by to politely remind me of the time. It'd gotten later than I'd realized. I'd wiped my hands clean, tidied the charcoals away into the beautiful case given to me by the Queen of a neighboring country, extinguished the lamp and retired for the night.
     Outside was heavy, cold, silent. Save for small safety lamps glowing in the halls the house was dark. Cooling pipes clanked somewhere. My room was empty, Chihirae off in her own bed that night. That wasn't uncommon. It'd surprised me at first — she'd never assumed she'd sleep with me every night. But then, it's not like we... like we're... Like what I wish we could be and can't. She's not mine; I'm not her's. Can never be. I have to keep telling myself that.
     The warming pan wasn't the same at all. Better than nothing I told myself again as I blew out the candle and drew the heavy eiderdowns up.
     Dreams came: unwelcome, murky and disturbing.
     Lights and life in some place impossibly far off; Rris faces on city streets where cars whisked by. Rris faces in shops and restaurants. Indistinct labyrinths of peeling plaster and dirt where vague forms chased me through gloom and fog; my fists pummeling and shaking a snarling, toothed disembodied inhuman head that snapped and growled things and wouldn't be still; spoke things I didn't want to hear; spoke my name...
     I was awake. It took a few seconds before I understood that. Awake and still breathing hard, staring into blackness. In the darkness someone spoke my name again. There was a weight on the side of the bed, someone sitting there and carefully touching my shoulder. "Mikah?"
     "Who?" It was just a shadow in the darkness.
     "Me. Chihirae," the figure said.
     "Oh," I sagged. "Was I... again?" She understood. "You were talking. Just bits and pieces. I don't think you woke anyone. I thought you might want to see something."
     "What? What time is it?"
     A chitter. "Early. Come here. See," the weight on the bed shifted. I could make out her figure standing and leaning again to catch hold of my arm. Warm coverings fell aside as she pulled until I was sitting upright. I felt old scars twinge as the cold air touched them.
     "What? Where?"
     "Just... come along," she said again, tugging my arm until I swung out of bed and stood naked on the thick rug. "Come."
     It wasn't a good flashback. To that time outside the alley when a trusted hand had pulled me along and she'd said, "Come. It's alright," and I'd been betrayed. I shuddered.
     Chihirae felt. "Mikah? You're cold?"
     That was then, this was now "A," I said, taking the excuse. "It's freezing out here."
     "I know, but look."
     She pulled the drapes aside. It was night out there, heavily overcast, but it wasn't quite as dark as the room. A pale illumination almost too dim to be called light spilled in through the condensation-speckled windows, beyond which was static. In the black outside countless white flakes drifted down, in and out of view, filling the sky with an animated frozen waterfall. A continuously shifting cloud that blotted out anything that might've been out there in the night. It looked like it should have filled the world with some sort of noise, but it was utterly silent. It was winter.
     I stood at her side, the fur of her shoulder brushing my arm as I watched for a while. "So, soon then," I said,
     "A," she replied. "And I've got an answer to that question — Yes. I'll go."
     Seen sidelong in the feeble glow from an occluded moon, her face was a solemn cat's profile gazing out at the snow. She hadn't bothered dressing and just stood quite relaxed in her natural coat. "You're sure?"
     "A. Quite."
     I almost asked if someone had pressured her into that answer, but bit back the remark. I didn't want to know; I didn't want to talk her out of it because, hell, I'd wanted her to say yes. Really wanted it. Selfish. I knew it was, but I didn't ask. "Thank you," I said instead.
     Ears twitched. "Rot you, you're always finding trouble. You need me there, a?"
     "Hey, I'm quite capable of finding trouble on my own."
     A chitter and wisp of breath in the half-light. "Not what I meant."
     "I know," I said and took the step closer to embrace her. She was also warm and solid and in the dark, facing an uncertain future, that was very welcome. "Thank you," I said again. "It means... a great deal to me."
     She fussed with the hairs on my chest, stroking them, tweaking them. "It's no trouble. There's no problem with my work. And I've wanted to see other countries. Never thought I'd have a chance."
     "Anything you'd like to do there?"
     "I've heard ah Thes'ita keeps an extensive [something]. That would be worth seeing."
     "I don't know that word."
     "It's a... a collection of exotic animals. A [menagerie]. You understand that?"
     "A. I thought you'd be tired of strange animals by now."
     She chittered again and nipped at me. Her whiskers tickled and her hot breath washed against my neck. "How is that possible? There's always something new to learn about them."
     I grinned, laying my chin on her head as I looked at the window again: snow in the night for as far as I could see. "You know what disturbs me most about this?" I said to the smaller woman in my arms.
     "Huhn? What?"
     "That damn Mediator was right about the snow."

Winter had arrived with a vengeance, doing its best to bury the world. Or this part of it anyway. Drifts of white muffled everything, damping sounds and rounding edges and smoothing corners. Trees and bushes were smothered beneath the fall of new snow; walls and rooftops wore caps of linen white; details of the land were lost under drifts of powder. Anemic early morning sun burned through a thin icy fog, painting the white with tints of saffron and rose. Icicles glittered from eaves and branches.
     "You're not running in that?" Jenes'ahn had asked.
     "It's only snow," I'd retorted.
     A good half-dozen centimeters had fallen during the night. It'd melt a bit and compact, but that morning it was powder and fresh. I knew that field by heart and figured that after a couple of laps the track would be well packed down. The air was icy, stinging my face and biting at my sinuses as I stood on the back porch.
     "I think it could be risky," Jenes'ahn said from right behind me. "You don't like the cold — you shiver in the slightest chill. And you're not dressed for it."
     "It's only for a short time," I said. "Besides, it wakes me up."
     My moccasins scrunched into fresh snow as I stepped off the porch. My breath curled around my shoulders as I set off at an easy pace. Behind me I heard the Mediator's snort of exasperation. If it pissed her off, it was all the more reason to do it. Juvenile, perhaps, but I didn't have any other way to hit back at them. After they'd... they'd used me, they'd used my friends, risking lives just so their Guild could maintain its charter. And if I told anyone, I'd condemning myself, and by extension, Chihirae. So I kept quiet, but I didn't make things easy for them. Perhaps I half-thought they'd get tired and give up.
     Juvenile. Ignorant. Angry.
     So she headed off to her usual place under the old oak to wait. The snowfall had settled on top of the deep meadow grass, so she had to slog through a knee-high strata of sodden, icy grass and snow, leaving a trail gouged across the pristine white. I had it a little easier — the track I'd flattened through the meadow over the previous months was quite visible as a depression around the edge of the field.
     I took it easy to start with. Pink-tinged morning sunlight threw the uneven surface into relief, emphasizing the lumps and dips where it lay over the deep meadow grass. It wasn't that deep for a new fall, but did hide little pits or hollows that could turn an ankle or knee. So I was rounding the far corner, concentrating on my pace and footing when I heard Jenes'ahn's yell sound across the field. She was on her feet, kicking ice flying as she bounded through the snow toward me and she was drawing a pistol on the run. Which meant...
     My abrupt turn meant the wildly swung blade missed me. I recoiled, staggering back even as my assailant came at me from the hedge, swinging again and snarling, "You lied! You lied!"
     What threw me was the fact the attacker was only as high as my waist. A damn child!
     "You lied," the cub snarled and came at me again. Over the snarl the eyes were completely black, "You said you'd help!"
     The knife slashed past again. I caught that hand as it slowed for a backstroke, held hard and twisted. There was a yowl and the cub bent with my grip, loosing his grip on the knife and tumbling into the snow, giving before a bone in his wrist did. I stepped on the weapon before the cub scrambled for it and he went for my hand with bared teeth. I twisted again and he yowled again, going to his knees. "Okay," I said to the hairball I held in one hand. "Who the hell are you and what... No! Stop!"
     The last I yelled at Jenes'ahn, who'd arrived and was stepping around me and leveling her gun. I let go and lunged at her, swatting at the gun, knocking it up and out of the way. The pistol discharged into the air, the boom reverberating through the winter stillness. Smoke rose, sparks drifted down. Distant shouts rose. The Mediator snarled at me through the powder smoke and the cub scrambled backwards in the snow wide-eyed and abruptly silent. "It's a cub," I snapped at Jenes'ahn. "You'd shoot a child?"
     "He had a knife," she hissed back.
     "Which he doesn't now," I said and looked down. The knife had been trampled into the snow. I picked it up, turned it over and then showed her. "And you call this a knife?"
     It was a stick: a piece of wood with a piece of broken glass tied to it with ratty twine. It'd have caused superficial cuts, but not much more. I stood over the cub, looking down on him. Barely an adolescent. Damn it, that was the second time. "What the hell were you trying to do? Who are you?"
     The cub snarled again, a gesture somewhat undermined by the sheer fear in his eyes and flattened ears. "You don't even remember," he spat. "You lied, and you don't even remember."
     I hesitated. There was a nagging feeling of recognition, but Rris were so damn hard to tell apart, especially after brief meetings. "Do I know you?"
     "You said they'd help us," he muttered, then hissed. "They didn't. They turned us away. It was all we had to get here. We didn't have anywhere to go. Now she's sick and you lied! She helped and you lied!"
     And then I knew who he was. And I felt a sinking sensation as I realized he was right. And if he opened his mouth again where Jenes'ahn could hear, he'd be in more trouble than he could imagine. "The kite," I said quietly. "You had a flying toy."
     He blinked, suddenly looked uncertain. "A," he said and flashed small but sharp teeth at me, then shrank back again. "Rothi," he accused. "You don't even remember!"
     I remembered. Of course I remembered. I'd been on the run, pursued by hostile Mediators and they'd helped me. They hadn't had much, just a tiny cabin and a few head of cattle, but they'd given me food and shelter for the night and helped me on my way — and if the Mediators heard about that, it'd all hit the fan. I'd also promised to pay back their generosity. Talk to Chaeitch or myself I'd told her, and you'll be given whatever you need.
     I'd never passed that message on to Chaeitch.
     "Oh, shit," I muttered and crouched there in the snow. It brought me closer to his level. "Rothi," I echoed. "Rothi. Rot. I... I do remember. I didn't think... a lot's happened. Ea'rest..." I remembered. "Your mother..."
     "You said you would help her," he snarled at me. "You said to say your name. It didn't do anything. They didn't listen. She's ill. She won't move..."
     Oh christ. Oh crap. He was right. I'd never thought. I'd forgotten to pass the message on. And with all the randoms coming out of the woodwork wanting to meet with me, of course they were ignored. Lost in the noise. I stood up and he flinched backwards, away from me.
     "Leave him alone," I snapped at Jenes'ahn as she started forward, and perhaps she caught something in my tone because she stopped, glared at me.
     "Where is she?" I asked the cub before the Mediator could start with her questions.
     He hesitated, then said, "In the city. She's ill. She won't move. She won't talk. Nobody will help..."
     Shit. Okay. "We'll go get her," I told him. "Come on. Stay close."
     Jenes'ahn only had time to open her mouth as I strode back past her and Rothi scurried after. Figures had appeared at the house, some already hastening towards us across the field. "Tich!" I bellowed. "Get the carriage ready. Now! And find a doctor."
     One of the figures stopped, hesitated, then turned and hurried back into the house.
     Guards were still galloping toward us while servants were lurking further back, looking uncertain. "Commander," I said to the first armed and armored guard who met us, "Bring some of your men along. We have to go into the city. Fast."
     "Sir," he said but still glanced past me at the Mediator.
     "This doesn't concern her," I snapped, drawing his attention back to me. He didn't seem convinced. "Commander. There's no danger to me, but this is urgent. Please: some of your men to accompany me into the city."
     The whiskers on the unscarred half of his face twitched back. "Very good, sir," he said and turned to his troops. "Hai! Two hands to ride. Mount up."
     Rohinia was at the French doors, fur still ruffled from sleep. That's all he was wearing, but he carried a pistol in one hand. "What is this?" he asked.
     "No problem," I said and he blocked the door, standing in my way.
     "What happened?" he asked again.
     "The cub tried to assault him," Jenes'ahn spoke up. "Apparently Mikah knows him from somewhere. Now, since he failed to harm him, he's trying to lure Mikah into the city."
     "It's not like that," I snapped. "His mother's ill."
     "How do you know?"
     "Otherwise she'd be here, not him. They were supposed to come and see me, but all these guards and rubbish wouldn't let them through."
     "We're here to protect you."
     I gave a snort of derision. "Of course. Only the most dangerous and cunning of individual cubs can sneak through your protection, a?" Muscles twitched under his fur. His fuse burned slower than Jenes'ahn's, but he had his limits. I was probably pushing them. "It's a personal matter," I said. "Important. An old friend needs some help. I'll tell you about it later, but right now isn't good. Guards are going with me. They can deal with any trouble."
     "Send them to collect her alone."
     "I owe her. I have to go."
     He squinted at me, as though trying to read some obscure type. "That doesn't make any sense. Guards can do this task perfectly well. You'll just be putting yourself at risk."
     "From what? I gave my word I would help her. I'll do that. You wouldn't want me to go and break my word, would you?"
     It was a little message he could read all right. Now his face froze, so did his tail. For a few heartbeats we faced each other, then he inclined his head a few degrees. "No. Your word is important," he said and stepped aside. "Go on, then. Jenes'ahn, you can look after this fool."
     Her response was an exasperated sound.
     The cub stayed close by, staring around wide-eyed as we passed through the living room. The clean surroundings just emphasized how ragged he was: muddy, tattered and torn, his fur unkempt and crusted with ice that dripped on the polished floor and carpets. There was a... smell. How long had they been out there?
     Chihirae was wearing as much as Rohinia had been, just as ruffled from sleep. Standing at the foot of the stair she blinked sleepily at me, at the cub. "Mikah? What's going on?"
     "It's okay," I assured her as I grabbed my coat, shrugging it on over top of my ratty T shirt.
     "There was gunfire."
     "A mistake," I told her and then looked, really looked at her. Ears slanted back, pupils wide... upset. I took a second to go back to her and touch her muzzle, stroking gently. "It's all right. Really. I'll be back."
     "Just... mind yourself," she said, still looking wary.
     I grinned and jerked my head at the Mediator. "That's her job."
     Tich had done as I'd asked. She was waiting out front, along with the carriage and its team and driver and ten troops on elks. The animals shifted restlessly, snorting as clouds of steam rose from their bodies.
     "Do you have a destination, sir?" Tich asked.
     I looked at Rothi, "Where're we going?"
     "In the low place," he said. "The Cracks, they call it. There's a place we found..."
     Tich knew it. So did Ha'rish, the driver. Not a good place, they proclaimed it, and from what I'd seen of the area I was willing to accept their judgment.
     As the little convoy swung around the loop of the drive and rattled away toward the gates I looked at the cub who'd huddled himself on the seat opposite, away from both Jenes'ahn and myself. He looked exhausted and anxious. For a second I wondered if Rohinia was right: was it a trap? A betrayal? It wasn't beyond the realms of possibilities, but it didn't seem likely. There were easier ways of doing it.
     "How do you know Mikah?" Jenes'ahn asked him straight away. "Where'd you meet him?"
     He looked at her, at me. Nervously. "At home. The farm we had. After a storm we found him sleeping in the barn. Mother let him stay a night. He did some work for us."
     "Huhn," she mused, watching him intently. "Where is your farm?"
     "It was in Cover-My-Tail."
     "Was?"
     "Mother sold it. She said farming wasn't for her."
     "And when was this?"
     He looked at me. "The past summer."
     "You said Mikah broke a promise."
     His ears flattened back. "He said that if she needed help to see him or an ah Ties. They weren't in Open Fields. We came here and nobody would listen to us. Our money didn't last. There was no work. She got ill."
     Another thoughtful rumble. "You just took him in. Just like that."
     His ears tipped a bit. "Uhn, he did surprise us. Mother almost stabbed him with a pitchfork before we found he could talk."
     "And what did he tell you?"
     "He was on the run from criminals who'd stolen him. He was trying to get to Open Fields. Ma said he knew things only someone who knew her highness would know."
     "Criminals, a?" Jenes'ahn eyed me.
     "'Dangerous smugglers', he said," Rothi elaborated. "Taking him to be sold." She didn't believe him, that much was obvious. But if he stuck by that story, if Ea'rest was bright enough to use it, then perhaps they had a chance. Ironic, that Jenes'ahn had probably hoped to get her questions in before I could give any hints but her little interrogation had backfired.
     I shrugged, smiled sweetly at her and said, "Criminals. Who else would do such a thing?"
     She glared and hissed. Rothi scootched away from her, looking alarmed.
     I leaned over toward him, elbows on knees , "Hey, don't mind her," I told him. "She's always like that. She's just annoyed that I make her get up too early. Ruins her beauty sleep."
     The cub looked uncertain.
     "You're not helping," Jenes'ahn growled at me.
     "And trying to intimidate a child is?" I retorted without glancing at her. "Leave him alone. Rothi, what happened? Why'd you come here?"
     He looked from the Mediator to me. She didn't say anything and he made a throatclearing noise and hesitantly started to relate their story. A newly snow-muffled world passed by outside.
     I did owe them. That wasn't in question. That boy and his mother had sheltered me while I was on the run some months back. Not, as he'd said, from unknown criminals, but from a Mediator faction. One of the conditions of the Mediator Guild's charter that gave them their mandate of overarching authority was that the Guild be unified. For outsiders to discover that the Guild had actively factious fractions could have been disastrous for the Mediators. And it could have been lethal for those who learned of it.
     Thank god Rothi had known to say I'd claimed bandits were after me. It wasn't true, but somehow I doubted that the truth would have set them free. Had Ea'rest told him to say that? That wouldn't have surprised me — there was more to that woman than simple farmer.
     She'd let me stay in their barn for a night. I didn't have any way of paying, so she'd given me much needed food and shelter in exchange for a little help about the farm. Ea'rest had known more than one would have expected about Cover-my-Tail's monarch. She'd also arranged for a friend to help me back to Open Fields. I hoped neither of them would mention anything about that.
     According to Rothi's account, after I'd left Ea'rest had gotten depressed. Restless. Her heart not in her job. There'd been trouble in town and money wasn't coming in. And it turned out that farming hadn't been the kind of quiet she'd been wanting. Eventually she'd sold the few cattle they had and they'd left the farm, bound for Open Fields. I wasn't there. After trying to ask the same questions to many people many time they got an answer at the Landof-Water embassy who said our party had left for Shattered Water. They'd used the last of their money to book passage. The journey had been very bad: the season was stormy and they hadn't been able to afford a cabin. It'd been cold and wet and miserable. On arrival in Shattered Water they'd found there was nothing here for them. No help, no place to go. Their money was gone. The Palace, the Guilds, Smither Industry, the guards around me... none of them wanted to hear from a pair of scraggly beggars and just sent them packing. They couldn't get close to either myself or Chaeitch. They couldn't get lodgings or find a place to stay. Guard kept moving them, threatening them. Nobody would listen.
     "You got desperate," I said.
     "She's ill!" he burst out. "She's coughing and breathing wrong and she won't eat and she won't move."
     I didn't try to pat his hand or something like that. Rris perceptions of personal space are... different. And honestly I had no idea how to comfort a distraught alien child who'd tried to stab me. It's not something that happens every day. About twice a year, yes, but not every day. "I'll try to help," I told him. "I owe you at least that."
     The cracks weren't a nice place. They were the city's u-bend; the place where the stuff that went down the drain ends up; the place for individuals who fell through the gaps. A place where street patrols were nonexistent, where there weren't street cleaners or proper sewers; where entire blocks shared the same well or pump; where city planning fractured and the streets and alleys and buildings grew to fill, well, the cracks. It was a place the authorities looked away from and really didn't want to know about. In the grip of winter fresh snow covered a lot of the nastiness, even applying a cosmetic quaintness in places, but it was only skin deep. Already traffic was turning streets to a slush of trampled snow, mud, ordure and other filth. And it was cold, freezing cold.
     We turned into a street that might've been paved once, but the cobbles were mostly gone and it'd become an icy slurry of snow and mud. The remaining stones were just jolting lumps in the quagmire. Rothi told us to stop there, at the entrance to an alleyway. Guards followed Jenes'ahn who followed me as the cub led the way into the crooked passage that was barely wide enough for me in places. Substances I didn't want to think about squelched under my moccasins and even in the winter air there was a reek of sewage. In the summer it'd have been horrendous.
     There was a little alcove ahead, something that might've been a yard once before additional buildings had encroached and turned it into not much more than a dent in the alleyway. That niche was now occupied by a nest of shanty huts no larger than refrigerator cartons, all cobbled together from scraps of wood, tiles, anything that could have been scrounged. Threadbare curtains hung over dark openings. A trio of Rris were gathered around one, the rear end and lashing tail of a forth poking from under the drape where it was kneeling in the doorway. Rothi gave a mewling sound and started forward. "No!"
     The trio turned, bristling at the interruption. One of them bared teeth and snarled, "Leave now!" at the cub before seeing me. The snarl evaporated. It got quiet enough that I could hear the muffled cursing and bumping from inside the shack.
     The anger roared in before I was fully aware it was there. I shoved through and advanced on the three thugs with a grin that wasn't at all amusement. I was counting on intimidation there: something they'd probably never seen before, almost blocking the narrow alleyway and hulking head and shoulders above them. And right behind me was a Mediator and a squad of guards. The three hesitated, then broke and pelted away, deeper down the alley. The one in the shack managed to back out, still oblivious to what was going on outside. He was clutching a sheathed sword in his hand. I recognized it.
     He yowled in shock as I grabbed his jerkin and hauled him to his feet and swung him around. As he turned he got a look at me and froze, long enough for my fist to catch him under his chin. It was a good hit, one of those ones you barely feel that carries through as though the target wasn't there. He felt it though. His jaws clopped shut with a sound like two pieces of wood knocking together and he lifted up and back and then just crumpled like someone had cut his strings.
     I flexed my hand, bent, picked up the scabbard and handed it back to Jenes'ahn. "Look after that," I said, stepping over the lump of shit on the ground and leaving it for the guards to clean up.
     Rothi was already inside the hovel. So was Ea'rest. She was alive, but I don't think she even noticed when I crawled in through the tatty curtain over the entrance. The place wasn't any bigger on the inside: black, light seeping in through the same cracks that let the warmth out, without enough room to stretch out or stand up, and there was a permeating smell of unwashed Rris and urine and smoke and illness. She was a bundle of rags curled up on some dank straw. I could see her ribs jerking as she panted, see breath misting in the chill air, hear a rattling gasp with each inhalation, but she was just staring at something out of sight even while Rothi was saying, "I found him, Ma. Ma. It's all right, Ma. It's all right now."
     I ripped the front off that shack to get her out. She was terribly easy to lift; she was underweight and her skin was far too hot to the touch. Her breath was weak and rasping and choked. Something nasty and respiratory. Pneumonia? Could they get that? Rothi stayed close by me as I maneuvered my awkward bundle through the narrow alleyway back to the carriage. I'd never known the rear seats could be folded down into a bed — not an impractical idea when journeys could take days — but Jenes'ahn did so and I got Ea'rest settled there. I don't think she knew what was happening, she just lay there, shivering and burning hot. Jenes'ahn touched her nose, pinched her ears, looked at her eyes, and listened to her breathing. "Fever," she said. "Bad one. It's serious."
     "Can a doctor help?" I asked. "Is there medicine?"
     She sat back on the other bench, Ea'rest's sword balanced across her lap, and waved a no. "Rest. Warmth and food. There's not much else that can be done. People either recover or they don't. Something like this though..." she didn't finish the sentence. Rothi couldn't help but hear.
     "It's a lung infection?" I asked.
     Jenes'ahn looked confused. "I don't know. What do you mean?"
     A different world. She was one of the elite, but she still didn't know about things I learned about in grade school. To most of their doctors they were fantastic new concepts they were still debating. Those debates wouldn't help. Neither would their medicines. There was only one thing I knew of that might.

Lamps were burning in the Palace that evening. Puddles of warm light, cross-hatched by architectural occlusions, spilled out across expanses of pristine snow. The only other light came from a few high wisps of cloud glowing gold under a few lingering rays from a sun sunk below the horizon. Around the drive and the Palace front steps that spotless white had been churned to a grey slush that resembled the lunar surface: cratered with feline footprints that tracked ice up the steps and into the hall. Freezing cold in there. And dark — the few lamps were just spots in the gloom as we trekked through the halls.
     "Mikah," Kh'hitch cocked his head as the guards ushered the Mediator and I into his office. A fire was roaring in the stove there, but that was the only concession to the chill. "Thank you for attending this meeting. However, you might be interested to hear it had been scheduled for this morning."
     "Better late than never," I replied.
     He considered that, then said, "I don't believe so. No. On time would have been far more satisfactory. As it is quite a few people are greatly annoyed that a meeting they'd prepared intensively for was quite wasted." He sniffed, resembling a gaily-colored barrage balloon putting on airs.
     "Some things have priority over people who want to get rich quick," I said.
     "Perhaps his highness wishes to debate that," he said and went to announce me.
     Hirht's office was dark and cold. A single lamp of brass and milky glass cast a puddle of light across his battered desk and the carpet, glowing on the fur of his arm as he scratched a fountain pen across a page. He blotted the page, wiped the pen down and when he raised his head his eyes flared like twin crucibles of molten metal. "Mikah. Constable. So good of you to feel you could attend."
     Ah. "Apologies for this morning, sir," I said.
     "Hurhn," he coughed, rumbling like an old motorcycle engine kicking over. "Please, sit." He gestured at the two cushions on the rug before his desk and waited until we were settled.
     "You made things interesting for us, but I understand it was even more so for you." He used a claw to drag a note across the desktop, setting it before him. "First an assault upon your person by a child. Then running off to the cracks where you apparently disposed of some undesirables and collected his invalid mother. And then a trip to the University where you appropriated some of your medication, which ah Ner was none too pleased about. A busy morning indeed."
     "A, sir," I said and flexed my fingers again. My knuckles were feeling it now.
     He cocked his head, waited a second, then said, "That's it? Just, 'yes, sir'? No explanation?"
     I looked at Jenes'ahn who was looking as worn around the edges as I was feeling. "Ummm, I think that about covers everything, sir."
     Wisps of breath streamed from his nostrils, wreathing his muzzle. "There is perhaps some explanation?"
     "She helped me once," I said. "She gave me a chance. I owe her."
     "Owe her that much?"
     "A. At least. If she hadn't, things probably would have turned out... differently."
     "Huhn, that much." Staccato clicking as he rapped clawtips against his desk. "This assistance was in Cover-my-Tail, was it?"
     "A."
     He snorted again, glancing between the Mediator and myself. "There a moments I do get the feeling that I haven't been informed of everything that went on there."
     "No," Jenes'ahn said. "Guild business."
     He accepted that without a flicker. "Could she be a threat to Mikah?"
     "It's not beyond possibility, but doubtful. The illness is certainly genuine enough — damp cough. Bad case. I've see people die from lesser cases."
     "Mikah, your medication will work?"
     I shook my head before I remembered to tip my hand in a shrug. "I can't say. It's for my kind, but it's designed to target the kind of... animal that causes illness like that. I think... It'll either cure or kill her."
     "No treatment might have been better?"
     I tipped my head toward the Mediator, "She said there didn't look like much chance of that. Do nothing and she would die. Do this and she might."
     He blinked. "Expensive. You don't have much of that medicine, do you."
     "Even less now," I replied easily. "It won't keep forever, anyway."
     "Huhhn," he growled, tapping clawtips again. I wasn't sure what that meant. Stress? Concern? No, I'd seen those before, and those tells were different. "It could be a concern. Constable?"
     Her muzzle creased as she flashed teeth in a brief snarl. "A, I am aware," she said, and then added, "If it works. It doesn't seem likely."
     "Stranger things have happened," Hirht said and I looked from one to another, puzzled. "That's something for later, Mikah," he said. "Now, you've got a foot in each boat, a?"
     "In what way?"
     "You've got this new burden to look after, and you're leaving in three days."
     "Three days?" I looked past him at the tall windows. In all the multitude panes glimmered reflections of a small lamp, looking very small in the blackness. Outside, it was snowing again. "Huh, doesn't time fly."
     "Quite," he said. "So you've got that to attend to as well as your new guest."
     "A. I noticed. I think that someone on the staff will be able to look after Ea'rest. If I can't be around, I can make sure there'll be people to help her."
     "And what does she want? I assume she had a reason for coming to see you."
     I shrugged. "I'm not sure about that. I said I'd help her, but no specifics. If she needs money, I can give her what I can. If she wants to start a business, I'd back her. She makes good pies."
     He stared. "Pie?"
     "A. Pie. You know: pastry with meat inside?"
     "Yes. Yes, I know," he hissed softly and looked to Jenes'ahn, "Strangely enough, constable, when I took my oaths, I never expected there'd be days quite like this."
     "I can sympathize, sir," the Mediator said blandly.
     "You should try it from this side," I offered.
     One of Hirht's ears flicked back. "Aside from her [culinary] abilities, you think you can trust her? She's not here to simply suckle at your teat?"
     I wasn't sure I'd heard that correctly. "Uhmm, excuse me, sir?"
     "It's an expression, Mikah. I mean, she's not simply going to take advantage of you? To keep demanding money and support from you?"
     "Honestly? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think she's the type."
     Hirht eyed me for the few heartbeats the opening was there; I was just waiting for him to say something about how I wasn't the greatest judge of character. But it was Jenes'ahn who stepped in to say, "Sir, in this matter Mikah may be right. There's a good chance she's... trustworthy."
     The Rris king looked a little surprised. As was I. "There's a reason for this?"
     She waved a shrug. "I can't say for certain until I have chance to talk with her. There are a few questions, but I think she isn't a [carpetbagger]."
     Hirht sat motionless for a few heartbeats, then clicked a claw briskly on his desk. "Hai, very well then. And Mikah, you don't think it's going to be a problem."
     "Famous last words, but no, sir."
     "Very good," he said and the claw tapped again. "Now, perhaps we have time to discuss some business. I must say a lack of any further surprises would be a pleasant interlude. At least until your departure. The journey shouldn't be a particularly arduous one. The route is well travelled. There are towns where you can refresh. But it will take some weeks. You should use the time to prepare for Red Leaves, where I suspect you will be extremely busy.
     "Now, your teacher has agreed to travel with you, a? That's some good news. She's going to assist you with some history of Bluebetter and Red Leaves." He glanced down at the paper before him, "Ah, and also with your letters, which I understand still require some work.
     "Ah Ties will take the opportunity to brief you on the industrial representatives we think you'll most likely be meeting: their likes and the best way of dealing with them... all the usual. The university representative will do the same in regards to ah Thes'ita and his associates, politicians and local Guild leaders. That advice will be vital for you: there are people there who are not happy about you or any new and upsetting ideas. I would advise you to apply yourself while you have the chance. It will doubtless come in useful and could save some embarrassment for all parties."
     I recalled Chaeitch had mentioned the university was sending a representative. "Who's the University sending?" I asked.
     Hirht glanced at the papers. "That is still... huhr... uncertain."
     "They still don't know? Can't they just draw straws or something?"
     "There's somewhat more to it than that," he said. "They have said they'll have selected someone by the time you leave."
     I shrugged. It was their problem and I was happy to keep it that way.
     "And I understand you have some equipment being made for you."
     "Warm clothing," I elaborated, and then added, "Although, if they're all done in time they'll certainly be earning their fee."
     Hirht waved a hand, dismissing my concerns. "They'll deliver. Those businesses have a reputation for fulfilling their contracts, so they'll deliver.
     "Expect to leave early. The carriages will collect you at dawn so be ready and pack the night before. Mikah, we assume you will wish to travel along with your teacher. There'll also be transport for ah Ties, aesh Smither, your Mediator escorts, your staff and supplies. A full troop of mounted guards and their support will ride escort. Constable, they will take orders from you, but their standing orders are to protect Mikah."
     "A full troop?" Jenes'ahn spoke up.
     "We're favoring the cautious side."
     "Quite," she murmured.
     "The Bluebetters will be meeting you with a similar force at Yeitas'Mas on the border. They insisted on the size of the force. We matched it."
     "Are they expecting trouble?" I asked. "I had heard their government was having some problems. We're not going to be walking into a civil war?"
     "I've been assured no such thing will happen," Hirht said calmly. "They're being as cautious as we are. Neither side wishes a repeat of Open Fields."
     I glanced at Jenes'ahn but she wasn't showing any sign of concern that I could see.
     "Onwards from Yeitas'Mas our troops and the Bluebetter forces will escort you to Red Leaves. They will be hosting you and your [entourage] for the length of your stay and then escorting you back to the border. This is clear?"
     "As glass," I said.
     "Quite," Jenes'ahn rumbled.

Snow and ice squeaked beneath the wheels. Starlight peeped through stark branches. Winter-bare boles emerged from the night and then vanished back into it behind us as the carriage rolled along the avenue of trees away from the palace. I stared out into the black and snow, at the hidden gardens lost in the palace grounds and remembered: A summer day, warm sun and dusty grass and a friend who'd shown me that were things of beauty and art out there in this alien world. Someone who given everything for me and then, in one move, had taken it back again. Memory ached like a broken tooth.
     Jenes'ahn said something, startling me. Some feeble light cut a wedge across the dark cab, liming a furry leg in moonglow, but her body was in shadow. "What was that?" I asked.
     "I said: You're required at the Guild hall tomorrow morning," the Mediator repeated.
     "Oh. Great."
     There was movement in the darkness and her eyes flashed. "You're distracted. What's in your head?"
     "You're concerned about the journey?" Question fended with a question. She knew that game, of course, but she played.
     "What makes you think that?"
     "Asking about the size of the escort. You think there's a reason."
     "I was concerned about the size of the supply train," she said. "That many troops will require managing and food, which requires storage and transport which require more personnel... it's an unwieldy amount."
     "But they think it's necessary."
     "Huhnn," the response was a growl in the darkness. My hackles crawled.
     "He said it's to match Bluebetter's forces. Is there a reason Bluebetter thinks they should have so many troops going to meet us? Are they worried about something?"
     The pair of shimmering discs in the shadows shifted color fractionally as the angle changed. "Your safety, perhaps? Trying to protect an investment."
     "Against?"
     "Anything that might happen. Perhaps they're being overly cautious. Or perhaps they're trying to make a point. Or perhaps trying to impress you by showing how much they value you."
     I frowned. "I can't help but remember there was some trouble in Bluebetter: civil disturbances, I heard. Also weapon smuggling, murder and such. I'm not so keen on getting caught in the middle of a civil war."
     "His highness assured us all such issues were under control. As far as the Guild knows, no ratified challenge to the appointment has been issued. All countries have their internal problems and the Guild doesn't concern itself with all of them. Only the severe disruptions."
     No guesses what that pointed jab was aimed at.
     Sounds of the wheels changed and the cab was plunged into a deeper blackness as we passed under the gatehouse. Her eyes still glimmered a phosphorescent green even then, only blinking when the carriage emerged from the short tunnel and swung around onto the road. Moonlight and shadows chased each other across the cab.
     "Investment?" I asked. "Bluebetter is paying for me?"
     "A."
     "I hope I'm not cheap," I said.
     "No. Far from it."
     "That's something," I grinned before a thought struck me. "So, we would probably have gone to Bluebetter anyway. Eventually. To discuss the business of the rail line for Land-ofWater. But because Bluebetter wants us to go, Hirht is asking recompense?"
     "A," she said again and I caught movement as she waved a shrug. "Sometimes what's offered freely is regarded suspiciously so it can be easier to just set a price. Ah Chihiski well understands this."
     "Not so different from my kind," I said, amused. "And how did you know she can be trusted?"
     "You are referring to your patient?"
     "A."
     "You don't recognize the sword, do you," she said.
     "Should I?"
     She stared for a second, head cocked, then snorted. "Perhaps not. It's not common. A few have them; a select few. They're house acknowledgements for exemplary service. That [tang] was marked from the Esrisa personal guard."
     It took a second for the penny to drop. "Lady H'risnth?"
     "Aesh Esrisa, a. For service with distinction and loyalty. They're not given out lightly. If she's received one, then her ladyship thought quite highly of her." In the shadows I thought I saw a flash of teeth. "You didn't think I trusted your judgment, did you?"

"How's she doing?" I asked quietly as I opened the door into the guest wing. The hallway was carpeted, with walnut wainscoting and white plaster above. A single painting on the white — a town's tile roofs beneath a rocky outcropping upon which sprawled an old fortress catching last sunlight — was a piece that'd been gifted to me by the ambassador from Overburdened. In the light of the single lamp it was difficult to make out details.
     "She's sleeping, sir," Tich said quietly from behind me, holding the lamp up to light our way. "They both are. Staff are tending them and watching over them. She seems calmer, but I fear it's too early to tell."
     Rris are quite territorial and take their living space seriously, not like us gregarious apedescendants. To intrude on another's home is considered the height of crass rudeness. In private homes the rooms guests are quartered in have their own small wings, closed off behind their own doors to give host and guests some separation. I'd gone with Rris advice and kept that in mind when renovating, although I'd never intended to have this many guests. Chihirae had her quarters; The Mediators had the only two bed guest room, with clanking radiator pipes included free of charge; and now these unexpected visitors. Thankfully the house was large enough to accommodate them all, although I was running out of spare rooms.
     Down the hall the bedroom door — a weathered and worn thing from an old building that'd been planed and sanded down and reused — was ajar. It swung open silently when I nudged it a little and poked my head in: inside was warm and dark and smelled of soap and broth and pine and illness. The radiator ticked quietly and the small black stove crackled and added its warmth. Little glass bottles stood on the nightstand, alongside a porcelain basin with a folded cloth hanging over the side. White sheets glowed in the lamplight, halfcovering Ea'rest laying supine on the big bed. Rothi was a ball of fur curled up at her side, nestled against her. Neither stirred as we looked in, and in the silence Ea'rest's breathing was audible. Deep breaths in the quiet, easier than it'd been while we were bringing her back. She also seemed to be sleeping, not just insensible to what was around her.
     The Rris doctor had done his stuff, which hadn't been a great deal. He'd had a balm that'd smelled like some sort of mint that was supposed to help breathing — something like Vicks — that he'd soaked into a cloth to go over her nose. Then he'd ground up some seeds into a powder that he said would ease the cough. She'd inhaled the powder and started gasping alarmingly. I don't think anyone set much stock in those remedies. I'd just been able to give her one little pill and made sure the pair got some warmth and food. Rothi alone had devoured something like half his body weight.
     I backed out, easing the door closed and then beckoning to Tich to come away. Down the corridor I whispered to her, "Just let them rest. Keep an eye on her. If she gets worse, let me know."
     "Yes, sir," Tich said.
     Chihirae was waiting, leaning in my doorway with ears canted at a concerned angle. "They're all right?"
     "Sleeping," I said. "He's exhausted. So's she. They're sleeping."
     She made a considering huffing sound, then cocked her head. "Mikah, who are they?"
     Ah. What with all the goings-on and shenanigans, I'd never actually told her. Chihirae sat herself tailor-fashion on the blue, green and rust-colored paisley goose-down quilt on my bed as I filled her in. "Her name's Ea'rest. The child is Rothi. When I was over in Cover-myTail they helped me. They didn't have to, but they took me in and gave me shelter."
     "Like Westwater, huh?" she said.
     "A," I nodded. "Like that. I promised to repay them. I said that if she came to me in Open Fields or here, then I'd help her out in any way I could." I sighed then and tried to encompass my failure in half-formed little gesture. "I forgot."
     "What sort of help?"
     "Whatever she needs."
     "That's a little open-ended, isn't it?"
     I shrugged. "So I've been told. But, she probably saved my life. She did... a great deal for me."
     She lowered her muzzle, eyeing me. "You don't want to tell me exactly what happened over there."
     My heart lurched and I urgently said, "I didn't have sex with her. I didn't."
     She snorted dismissively. "Rot. Who care about that? No, everything else."
     I settled back, trying to read her. No, she didn't mean that. She wasn't judging; she wasn't jealous. That wasn't the way they worked. On my trip to Open Fields I'd ended up sleeping with the Lady H'risnth, the Rris queen of that country. It wasn't planned, and while both parties had technically been consenting, I'd been under some duress. If I hadn't done as her Ladyship desired things may have been even more difficult. It'd been an... exchange of sorts: She'd been exceedingly curious; I'd needed assistance. So we'd made an arrangement; I'd paid my way. The whole incident had occurred on her ground, in the privacy of her estate, hidden even from her own staff. More importantly, it was a secret from the Mediator Guild.
     The Guild had done things they weren't supposed to. If those violations of their charter were to become common knowledge, a great deal of their power base would be undermined. I knew about those transgressions, and the Guild knew that I knew, but they'd deemed me too valuable to simply dispose of. They had me on a short leash that consisted of my two watchdogs, as well as some promises that should I get out of hand or talk, then people around me, people I cared about would be the ones who would suffer. Other Rris who knew of the difficulties that'd gone on within the Guild, Rris who weren't so valuable, wouldn't be given such a chance. They'd just be killed. I'd seen how ruthless the Guild could be.
     Ea'rest knew. So did Lady H'risnth.
     The Guild suspected that I'd told others. Perhaps they even had suspicions just whom — I was pretty sure they were keeping a close eye on her Ladyship. They didn't have any evidence that I'd approached her or that she'd assisted me. But if they learned I'd spent the night with her, that she'd given me money and shelter and some other vital assistance and not informed the Guild as to my whereabouts, then they'd start asking why she hadn't informed the Guild I was there; asking her how much I'd told her. And I'd told her too much for her own safety.
     After that they could simply follow the trail like a spark up a fuse, at the end of which was damnation for myself and people I knew.
     I shouldn't have told Chihirae as much as I had. Shouldn't have, but I had. I'd told her what'd happened between her ladyship and myself. Out of guilt or desperation or some other selfish need. She'd accepted it calmly, rationally, as a matter of fact, as a secret I'd entrusted to her. The only time she'd mentioned it had been in the deep of the night, a hot breath whispering in my ear asking if I'd had fun and then a sharp nip with sharp teeth. That was all. Of jealousy, I hadn't detected even a smoldering ember.
     Now she was just asking about the things I hadn't said: the aspects of my ordeal that'd been swept under the rug. I slumped down at my desk, on my chair which wasn't a usual piece of Rris furniture in a wealthy household. "If you ask me to tell you, I will," I said.
     "But you don't want to."
     I shook my head. "No. I don't. If they knew — if they thought you knew — I don't know what they'd do."
     "I'm going to ask that question," she rumbled, watching me with eyes of liquid amber.
     My heart skipped a beat again. I just nodded dumbly.
     "Someday," she continued. "Not today, but someday."
     I sagged, leaning forward with elbows resting on knees. "You're so cruel to me," I accused her.
     "Huhn, and you burden my back with the question of whether to ask or not, a?" she returned and cocked her head, from one side to the other. "It really disturbs you, doesn't it. Just me saying that and you... you suddenly reek of terror."
     "Chihirae, I... I honestly don't know what they would do if they thought you knew. The thought of that scares me more than anything."
     A long pause filled with silence, the occasional sounds of an old house settling. And then she said quietly, "I know. That's... not normal."
     I bit my lip. "You're... angry?"
     She stood, getting up off the bed in a smoothly liquid motion and stalked over to me, looking down. Clawed fingertips laid on my head, ran through my hair, scratching across my scalp and then brushing errant strands back away from my face. "I'm not angry," she said down to me. "Not about that. It's just that when you act like this, it's... Mikah, sometimes it's almost possible to forget you're not Rris. Then there are times like this — when you seem to be using words in ways they aren't meant to be: terms of endearment and ownership mixed together. It's... not usual."
     Her hand stroked my beard and hair, curling stray wisps back behind my ear.
     "You could leave, couldn't you," I said. The hand hesitated. "You could just leave now and go back to Westwater, to wherever you wanted to go. You'd be free. I'd just be a memory. You wouldn't feel it."
     "But you would," she replied. "If you were Rris... I could. And it would be normal and there'd be no complications. But you... Mikah, you'd end up like a wolf alone. You'd do something insane or foolish. I like you and I don't want to do that to you. I'm already free to make my choices: I choose to stay with you; I choose to go with you to Bluebetter."
     And I thought: you say you're free, but you're still chained by my concerns, my needs. And I need you.
     "You're precious to me," I said. "I can't change that. I don't know if I want to."
     I think she sighed then. Or perhaps she just hissed softly. Her hand stroked my cheek and she said, "Good night, Mikah, my strange one," and then she silently walked out, pausing outside the doorway to glance back at me once before continuing on her way back to her room.
     For a while I sat at my desk, staring blankly at the darkness outside the windows. It stared back at me, the silence deafening. Sometimes, this world is too quiet: no cars or planes or mechanical sounds to drown out your own thoughts. And moments like that I needed something to help stop me thinking myself to death. I flipped my notebook lid open, chose something low key. The Feelers suited my mood right then, Weapons of War rolling through the night. I snuffed the desk lamp and leaned back. Electronic visualizations twisted and curled on the screen, their colors washing across the desk. Beyond them, out through the window panes, occasional flakes drifted in and out of view.
     She'd said she wasn't mad at me? What then? Scared? Exasperated? Disappointed? Frustrated? Perhaps the last. That would fit. It also mirrored my feelings. Sometimes those talks were like trying to press the tips of a pair of needles together: an exercise in frustration. So many times the actual point of a conversation would just glance off the other.
     Frustration. I understood that. I wanted to stay with her, but, hell, how could that work? East is east and west is west and all that. I couldn't expect her to stay. It'd be best for her if she found herself a good guy, a Rris guy, and got something with him. Chaeitch. Funny how I thought of him in moments like that. They got on well together. Very well — I'd blundered in on them in flagrante delicto and made a complete hash of that night. They'd thought I'd get too possessive of her; that I'd get angry about his encroachment, and that either scared him away or made my hosts get some peculiar idea and ordered him to back off. And a part of me, a jealous little part of me, approved of that: her sleeping around was something my hindbrain had serious mixed feelings about. The rest of me knew that was ridiculous: I wasn't her kind. He was. And he was a good guy and as far as I knew he was single, although I wasn't sure quite what that meant in Rris society. He'd be a good match for her. Perhaps while we were on this trip would be a chance to...
     And I was thinking in human patterns again. Matchmaking. It was idiotic and futile and yet I still did it.
     Electronic light flickered in the dimness. Grand Tour played Origami. I nursed a glass of peach brandy, swirling the pale liquid around. Doing more staring and thinking than drinking. Dire Straits' Private Investigations started.
     "I thought I heard... music?" said a tired voice from behind me.
     I flinched, nearly slopping some of the brandy as I turned, expecting to see Tich or perhaps Rohinia. Instead it was Ea'rest standing in the doorway. Or partly standing. The doorframe seemed to be holding her up. She was slumped against it, holding on to it. Her fur was ruffled and tufted and her ribs and other bones were terribly prominent, her ears were drooping and she was blinking through crusted, bleary eyes at me and the room. "This... where is this?" she rasped.
     "Oh, rot," I set the glass aside and hurried to reach her before she collapsed. "Rot! What're you doing? You should be resting."
     She shied momentarily and wavered unsteadily before I caught her arm. She blinked at me. "Mikah? You are... Mikah. I thought I... There was music?"
     "Aw, rot. Come on. Here. Sit. Before you fall on your face." I took her weight and steadied her, helped her over to the bed, where she sat down heavily, panting. She flinched when I carefully touched her nose, her ears. Her temperature was down and seemed normal. That was a relief.
     "What is that?" she asked, looking at the laptop, still playing un-Rris music and then around at the rest of the room. "Where is this?"
     "It's my home," I said. "Rothi found me and we brought you here. He told me what happened. I'm sorry. I didn't know they would... I never knew."
     She rubbed her face, ruffling already tangled fur. "Huhn, we chased you from Open Fields. When we got here they wouldn't listen to us."
     "I know," I sighed. "I know. I'm sorry. Sometimes they're overly protective of me." And add to that the fact that I'd entirely forgotten to tell my guardians that friends might try to contact me... I shook my head. "Rothi managed to get in and tell me. He took us to you. You were pretty ill. You still don't look so good."
     "Uhnn," she groaned and coughed. "Better than I was this morning."
     A rapid staccato clicking grew louder out in the hall: the sound of expressed claws in a hurry. A second later Tich appeared in the door, breathing a little heavily. "Sir..." she started before she saw Ea'rest and cut off. "Ah," she said, drawing herself up. "We found she'd left her room and were concerned."
     "It's okay," I told her. "We're just talking. Ea'rest, this is Tichirik, head of the house staff. If you require anything, just ask her. She'll provide whatever's required."
     "Ma'am," Tich inclined her head.
     "Regards," Ea'rest said, looking a little dazed and more than a little tired. She coughed again, a rasping noise.
     I frowned, went to the iron-bound chest at the foot of the bed and pulled out a lightweight throw blanket. It'd been a gift from some guild I couldn't remember and was quite beautiful and obviously expensive. Ea'rest protested when I put it around her shoulders. "Already warm," she said weakly.
     "Use it," I told her. "You need it. And you need food. Tich, can you please arrange something. Broth or a thick soup would be good, if possible."
     "Yes, sir," she said and was gone.
     Ea'rest pulled her blanket closer and looked around. "Servants and a mansion with plumbing and hot... pipe things and many rooms and fine clothes," she rubbed the fabric of the blanket. "I thought you were exaggerating. If anything you understated, a? And what is that?" she glanced toward the laptop again. Cold Chisel's Khe Sahn.
     "It's a long story," I said and went over to tap a key. The silence washed back in, and when I turned around Ea'rest was just watching me with exhausted eyes. "It's not important right now, really. What is is that you get some rest. You've been very ill."
     Ea'rest closed her eyes and I saw her cup her hand in agreement. "Did I do the right thing?" she asked.
     I hesitated, unsure as to what she was referring. "In what?"
     "I haven't been a good provider," she said dully, opening her eyes to stare down at her hands. "I left to look after him. I tried working for others. I failed. I thought I could succeed as a farmer. I failed in that. Your offer was the last chance we had."
     Ouch. "You didn't seem to be doing too badly."
     "We lost stock. Thefts. We couldn't afford to buy more. We found we couldn't sell in the market. There was..." she trailed off her, head hanging. "Eat or sell, but not both. You said you would help us. Can you?"
     "What sort of help do you need?"
     "You spoke of an inn," she said and now her words were slurred. She was exhausted. That was obvious, but she was still trying to talk to me. "You talked about inns and food and... and other ideas. I thought about it. I think I can do that."
     "I think I can assist with that," I said and Tich reappeared at the door, a covered bowl in her hands.
     "Broth, sir," she said.
     "That was quick."
     "Cook has a pot simmering, sir. He thought it might be required. Although, perhaps not at this moment?"
     I looked. Ea'rest was out like a light. Curled up in the blanket. On my bed.
     "Awww, crap."
     "I'll arrange to get her back to her room, sir," Tich said.
     "No. Don't bother," I told her. "She needs the rest. I'll make... other arrangements. Just keep an eye on her. If she wakes up help her back then."
     Tich hesitated, then said, "Very good, sir."
     I regarded the figure unconscious curled up on my bed and sighed, then packed the laptop down and hid it away from any curious fingers and headed down the hall.
     Chihirae cracked her door half a minute after my cautious knock. Her thickening winter pelt was ruffled and rumpled from bed and she blinked up at me.
     "Good evening, good lady," I bowed theatrically. "Would you, by any chance, know of a place where one such as I might sleep tonight?"
     For a second she looked confused, then her eyes narrowed and she laid her ears back. "A bed? For such as you? In my own quarters? Why, I would fear greatly for my own safety."
     "I can assure you I am quite tame."
     "Really?" her muzzle wrinkled. "How disappointing. And what of your own lair?"
     "Ummm, there would appear to be a strange lady sleeping in it."
     "Your guest? Her room wasn't good enough?"
     I shrugged awkwardly. "She stopped by and we talked. Apparently I wasn't very interesting. She's out like a candle. Chihirae, should I be apologizing?"
     She leaned her head against the edge of her door. "What? To whom?"
     "To you."
     She straightened, looking surprised. "Why? Whatever for?"
     "I'm... not sure. It's just that after that talk we had, I feel as if I did or said something wrong."
     A low chitter of amusement. "Oh, rot. It's... it's not something to concern yourself with. It's... it can be endearing sometimes. But if you need a bed, then mine is always yours. You know that," she said, almost reproachfully and opened the door, taking me by the hand.
     Chihirae's room was dark. Books on the shelves, papers and extinguished candle on her desk alongside a tiny, intricately wrought statuette of a tree. It was colder in there, with the radiator off and a window cracked open, but her bed was warm, her body even warmer and her musty scent of summer grass and sun-warmed dust was already permeating the sheets. We lay together. She nestled against me. I felt her legs twitch occasionally, felt her breathing ease and her heart slow as she stalked after sleep. Eventually, I followed.

The next morning was busy. Preparations for the journey continued apace and there were also my prepackaged appointments to deal with. I'd had time for a brief run and wash before Jenes'ahn hauled me off to the first meeting. Breakfast was sandwiches in the coach.
     Compacted snow squeaked under the wheels. The poached-egg disk of an early winter sun peeked through gaps between roofs and building, casting gold wedges on the facades on the other side of the street. Across the cab Jenes'ahn glared at me, her tail lashing. "You never mentioned anything about that! You know what you've done now?"
     "I told you what it could do," I said as I munched a turkey sandwich. "At the time you made understanding noises."
     "Huhn, but you never said it could cure an illness in a few hours. She would probably have died. And you just give her a little pill and she's fine!"
     "I told you it could help with some illnesses caused by infection."
     "Infection! She didn't have an infection."
     But she had. Of a kind. Amosil had been part of my medical kit, for use in case of tick bites while hiking. As with all antibiotics it's not effective against viruses, but it is effective against the bacteria that cause lung infections like pneumonia, which seemed similar to what she had — something contracted in cold and damp unhealthy conditions. I'd taken a guess that it'd work. Hell, there hadn't been anything to lose.
     Since the bugs here hadn't even had a chance to get acquainted with standard penicillin, its synthetic big brother must've been the equivalent of cracking a walnut with a piledriver. Her fever was gone within hours. She was emaciated and hungry and the stuff'd probably do a number on the useful flora in her G.I. tract as well as the malicious bugs, but she was going to live.
     "It was an infection," I said. "She might have caught it on the boat or in the streets.
     Cold and wet wind and wood... that'll do it."
     "And you know what you've done now?" she growled.
     "Saved a life?" I took another bite and offered her the pick-a-nick basket. "You sure you don't want one? Turkey and cranberry. Good."
     She hesitated, eyed the basket and then snatched a sandwich. I smirked. Looked like someone skipped breakfast. "So," I said. "What've I done?"
     She nibbled, scowled at me. "We're going to have to move fast and secure the university, that medicine, those who worked on it."
     "You don't think you..."
     "Are overreacting?" she snapped. "Overnight, you cured someone who most probably would have died. There are many other people out there just as ill. Some of them are powerful and quite desperate."
     I frowned, munched my breakfast. "Name five."
     "What?"
     "Name five of these desperate, powerful people," I said and she glared at me. "Sometime I think you sell your own people short," I continued. "That medicine is valuable, sure, but you don't need to over-react."
     Her ears flattened. "Until the Guild decides what's to be done with it, it's safer this way."
     "Huh. So you're going to bury that information as well?" I asked. "That medicine saved uncountable lives back home."
     "And you only now tell us of it?"
     I grimaced. "I've told you about it before. I made it quite clear to the palace what it could do. However, people were more interested in big, impressive machinery and things that made loud noises than in little pills. Hirht was a bit concerned about it the other night, but didn't seem to think it would work. Until something like this happens, then everyone sits up and takes notice."
     "As with a lot of your other claims, sometimes it's a bit much to take in," she said. "You talk about your world, and even with your box it can be a bit much to believe. Then you do something like that."
     I shook my head. "I haven't lied about anything. If you chose not to believe me, then that's your problem. Don't try to make me carry the load."
     "Mikah, we full well know there are some times you don't tell us the whole truth."
     I shrugged. "And your Guild is completely open with me? You're already trying to control what sort of knowledge I can release, even if you don't understand it yourself."
     "You already know the reason for that. Indiscriminate distribution of what you know would cause unbelievable disruption. As it stands, the only reason things aren't worse is that the Land-of-Water government was extremely guarded about what information they released."
     "The Guild here didn't seem very concerned about it. Actually, this is the first time I've been to the hall here."
     "I'm aware of their lapse. It's an oversight we mean to correct."
     "They can't have thought I was important enough."
     "We think it is more a case of them being told you weren't important enough. They were aware of your arrival. The Palace told them it was of little consequence."
     "Shyia would have known."
     "A. He did."
     "But he didn't say anything?"
     She favored me with a cold look.
     "He didn't," I grinned. "Hmmm, I wonder why?"
     "That's Guild business," Jenes'ahn said. "You'll keep your fingers out of it."
     "Of course. You never know where it's been."
     For the better part of another two hours the carriage clattered on through snow-muffled neighborhoods, the light swinging around in the cab as we turned corners. I watched the town passing outside, catching glimpses of life there: lumps of budding icicles sprouted from the undersides of eaves and branches. Smoke rose almost vertically from multitudes of chimneys, fading into the milky sky. The smell of roasting meat permeated an early market. Through an archway, past a fanciful ironwork gate of wrought curls and spikes; past a courtyard crisscrossed with washing lines festooned with red sheets; around a plaza decorated with gory statues of old battles. Everywhere Rris went about their business as usual, even with their breath steaming in the crisp air and snow clumping in the fur of their feet. There were perhaps a few more cloaks and shawls and tunics in evidence, but not the heavy coats and wardrobe a human populace would don.
     The Mediator Guild hall in Shattered Water was similar to the ones in Lying Scales and Open Fields in that it was a walled campus with the Guild buildings inside. Whereas the halls in Open Fields had been of new brick construction, the ones here were wooden. Big, threestory structures of black weatherboards with orange tile roofs, windows trimmed in white and cornices painted in garish blues and yellows. The huge old trees between the buildings were deciduous, now just snow-dusted trunks and branches spreading over the courtyards where apprentices with brooms swept paths through ankle-high drifts.
     They paused to stare as Jenes'ahn led me from the carriage. She glared back and they hurriedly turned back to their tasks. She snorted and led onwards along the freshly swept path up to the front entrance. As in the other Guild houses I'd visited the front doors were decorated. These ones were a pair of heavy wooden portals, the outsides of which were covered in deep bas relief carvings of Rris, possibly Mediators — I didn't have time to study them. They were coated in glossy black lacquer that gave them a creepy oil-like sheen. They were also scored by deep hacks and gashes that cut right down into lighter wood beneath.
     "What happened there?" I asked, hesitating at the heavy door.
     "History," Jenes'ahn grunted and kept going.
     I exhaled hard. "You missed your true calling. Born tour guide, you are," I muttered as I hurried after her.
     "What was that?"
     "Nothing..." At least the gouges were old by what looked like an order of centuries, so whatever that history had been, it hadn't involved me.
     The Guild hall was obviously old. Much older than the relatively new brick and mortar compound in Open Fields had been. It'd all been meticulously cleaned and maintained, but there were unmistakable signs: beneath new paint wood had dried and weathered and almost vitrified with age; windows were small things with tiny panes of warped and bubbled glass; corridors were cramped and narrow, the stairs twisted and the doors were too low for comfort. I had to actually bend over to pass beneath a few lintels.
     We finished up in a small room up on the first floor. Flat sunlight filtered in through a window. The diamond-shaped panes in their lead lattice were a hodge-podge of newer glass and ancient stuff with an aqueous tint so the room was smeared by a patchwork of winterbright and bottle-bluegreen sunlight dapples. Over in a corner a black iron potbellied stove sat on a stone slab hearth, throwing out heat. A few paintings hung on otherwise bare walls wooden walls. An intricately patterned green and russet rug covered most of the floor, and on that were a quartet of cushions placed around a small circular table.
     I sat where directed. Jenes'ahn settled herself opposite and we waited for several minutes.
     The table top was covered in dark leather, decorated with reliefs punched into the surface and stained with overlapping rings left by carelessly placed drinking vessels. The pictures on the walls were nothing special: mediocre landscapes and a couple of paintings depicting groups of soldiers — their versions of generic art prints hung up to fill a gap. Funnily enough, the room felt just like any small conference room in any corporation back home: just enough trinkets and gewgaws to fill the blank space and try and look presentable and tasteful, but in reality nobody really gives a rat's ass about it. Nobody here was trying to impress anyone.
     Five minutes before the door opened again and another pair of Mediators entered. A couple of males, I thought, although I'd been wrong before. The one in the lead was tall for a Rris and whippet-thin, wiry. His fur was grey and white and almost lacking in the tawny tones I'd seen in most Rris around me; a winter coloration that would blend into snow and rocks like camouflage. The other one was a smaller Rris, with a pelt colored in the more familiar earth and grey tones. He carried a small stack of papers and books in his arms. Both were wearing the usual Mediator padded tunic and breeches. Both were also armed. They settled themselves on the remaining pair of cushions and openly stared at me with amber eyes.
     I stared back until the tall one wrinkled his muzzle, twitching his lips back to flash teeth. "Huhn, I thought it would look more like a person," he said, musingly. I tensed and out of the tail of my eye saw Jenes'ahn jerk her head around at me, looking alarmed, just for a moment. He inclined his head to her. "Constable, thank you for attending."
     "Sir," she replied.
     The other Rris was laying papers out on the low table; a small stack of loose-leaf and a couple of folders, a pair of leather-bound books with bright yellow Rris script slashed on the covers. I could see the loose pages were covered with tightly-spaced writing. He produced a fountain pen from a pocket and opened a notebook.
     "Your reports," the first Mediator was saying to Jenes'ahn. "Interesting reading. Endless Circle also seems to think so. You've done well, given what you have been. They've accepted your decisions and current directives from them stand without change. We've dispatched word of the embassy to Bluebetter but their updates will probably meet you at the Red Leaves Guild Hall."
     "You approve of this outing?" she asked.
     He sniffed. "We've decided that it's preferable to the alternatives. Refusal on Land of Water's part could cause more upset than the Guild is prepared to accept. If other countries see that they won't even have a chance to join the feeding, then you'll be fending off assassins every night. Compared with that, the trip is an obvious solution. Easy journey. Both Land of Water and Bluebetter have vested interests in your success.
     "Now, we've been over information you provided — Land of Water's agenda for trade. The items they've listed are acceptable to the Guild. But is there anything we should know about?"
     "Such as?"
     "That's something we want to ask your charge. He's capable of answering, isn't he?"
     "He..."
     "I'm right here," I interrupted, leaning forward. "And I can speak for myself. You've got a question? Ask me."
     "Mikah..." Jenes'ahn growled.
     The other Rris tipped his head as he stared at me. His muzzle distorted momentarily, drawing lips back from sharp white teeth. "Ah, and he lives up to his reputation, despite that contract he initiated with us. Do you know who I am?"
     "No."
     A pause. "Really? Constable, you didn't tell him?"
     "Apologies, sir. I didn't know myself who would be receiving us. Previously it's only been aesh Sakhi here. I was not informed of a change of plans. Mikah, this is ah Kehetic, Guildmaster in Shattered Water. Guildmaster, Mikah. You know what that is."
     "I know what that is," I said flatly. "I met enough of them in Open Fields."
     Her ears went back.
     I'd met Guildmasters before. They were the senior Guild representatives in the various countries. I'd met the master in Open Fields. And I'd also met the master of a faction trying to suborn the Guild. One had wanted me dead and the other just wanted to use what I knew. They hadn't endeared themselves.
     "Mikah, you will show respect!" Jenes'ahn growled.
     I glared back. "I'm sitting right here. I will answer questions asked of me, but I'm not an animal or a complete idiot to be spoken around."
     She growled something else and bowed her head to Kehetic. "Apologies, sir."
     He flicked a hand and she subsided, still looking concerned. Off to the side the other Rris was watching with interest as the Guildmaster eyed at me. Creases marched up the bridge of the muzzle between his amber eyes as he glared, then shook his head and snorted. "Very well then, you speak for yourself. Tell us, what are your intentions in Bluebetter?"
     I shrugged. "I wasn't intending anything. It was never my plan to go. It's Bluebetter that wants me down there, and the government here is trying to keep them happy. I'm not sure what Bluebetter is going to ask of me, so I can't say what I'll do. I'll not have anything to do with obvious weapons, or anything on the list your Guild has drawn up. And of course your two constables will be along to make sure that anything else they might ask of me doesn't contravene some obscure regulation you have. So I'll listen to them and their questions, consult with your people and then decide what to do."
     His tail lashed, just once. "You intend to sell Smither Industry and Land-of-Water's services to them?"
     "Land-of-Water's people will sell their own services," I said.
     "It's knowledge they gained from you," he said.
     "A. It's theirs. They paid enough for it. Anyway, Chaeitch has done more than I ever could with it."
     "Hurh," Kehetic settled back a little, stroking his chin tuft. "And what of these plans that Smither has with Bluebetter? They intend to push for a road of rails between the countries, don't they."
     Now, how much did Chaeitch want me to tell the Guild? I'd put money on the fact that Chaeitch knew the Guild would put some question to me, so all he'd told me was what he'd wanted the Guild to know. If I told them, it most probably wouldn't be telling them anything I wasn't supposed to say or that they didn't already know. From what I'd gathered of the way the Guild worked — and of the way Rris tended to defer to mediators — if the Guild wanted the information they'd just ask Smither Industries and they'd get their answer. They'd probably already done that and were fishing for any other information they could get.
     "That is a matter they want to discuss with Bluebetter, a."
     "And to promote this plan they're willing to give away items and information?"
     I shrugged again. "It's more of a trade, I think."
     "Is a rail line that important?"
     I inhaled deeply. "It's going to take us about three weeks to get to Red Leaves. Would being able to do the same journey in a couple of days — with a hundred tonnes of cargo — be desirable?"
     He mused on that. "That would make some serious impacts on current trade practices."
     "It would make a serious impact on a lot of things."
     "He seems to think it's necessary," Jenes'ahn added.
     "Huhnn. Why?"
     "Because as your abilities and requirements grow, cities like Shattered Water are going to find there's more than they can handle. Individual countries won't be able to do everything themselves: designing, manufacturing the machines to make the machines, resources... They won't have the materials or the skills or the population to do it themselves. They'll need to... to spread the load among other factories or cities or even countries. Rail lines can let entire countries become as integrated as single cities."
     The Guildmaster lowered his muzzle slightly, his pupils dark chips in the orange glow of his eyes as he studied me. "Making cities and countries reliant upon one another, a?"
     "They can't do it by themselves."
     "You think we aren't capable?" he growled.
     "It's not a question of ability," I returned. "It's a question of resources and people. You simply haven't got enough people to do everything."
     "Your kind do?"
     "There are a lot more of us, but there are still never enough skilled people to do everything. So we don't try to do everything at once. Industry is spread out between cities and even countries in a very elaborate net."
     His expression didn't change but there were wheels turning there. "That's a very ambitious outlook."
     "A."
     "You are aware some countries, even cities or towns, aren't on the best terms. For many, the idea of relying upon neighbors for anything is a complete anathema."
     "Worried about their neighbors cutting them off?"
     "That..." he started to say and then hesitated, as if puzzled by the wording, then he cocked his head and tipped his hand in agreement. "That would be an apt description," he conceded and stopped again and his muzzle creasing as he thought things through. For a few heartbeats he stared at me like that and then leaned back, huffing air. "You said a 'net', did you?"
     I nodded, then frowned. "That's the right word? I thought it was the right word. Used in fishing? Many threads woven in a mesh? A net?"
     "A. That's correct. Why do you use this word?"
     "It describes such a system well. Everything is joined together; connected to each other. Like the threads in a net. And like a net, if some threads break, others still hold. If there are some broken threads, there are still others holding it together. It takes a lot to break it completely, and even if you succeeded, you'd just as likely be hurting yourself."
     The stare he gave me this time went on for longer. Dust motes stirred in a sunbeam slanting across the table between us and he studied me. A scritching noise crept about the edges of the following silence as the other Rris, the Guildmaster's secretary or whoever he was, scribbled notes into her book. I had to look at Jenes'ahn. "Did I say something wrong?"
     Her ears went back and then up again when the Guildmaster spoke up. "No. Not wrong," he said. "It is a... concept with angles to be studied. Angles we'd perhaps neglected, until our guest here so kindly explained them."
     Me and my big mouth.
     "A problem, sir?" Jenes'ahn asked.
     "Not as such," Kehetic replied. "Beyond the obvious, the Guild hasn't seen any difficulties with the agreement Smither is chasing. To date. But this is something beyond the commercial aspects we'd considered." He read some scratches on a piece of paper before him, then pushed it aside with a single finger and looked at me.
     "Mikah, what other changes could this rail road bring about?"
     "I'm not sure I can say," I said. "The mechanics of it I'm familiar with, but how it changes your lives... that I'm not sure about."
     "Why?"
     I glanced at Jenes'ahn, wondering if she'd explained this to them. "Ah, you're Rris. I'm not. The machines I know about, but what you choose to do with them — where your kind take them and what you use them for... I'm really not the best person to ask about that."
     "Your reason for that?"
     "I don't think we think the same way," I said and then sighed at his expression of incomprehension. "We do things differently. Because we are different. It means that I tend to think in terms of the way my people would do things."
     "Explain that."
     "It's difficult," I said and tried examples I'd used before. "My kind put up with overcrowding that I don't think Rris would tolerate. We need more warmth and lighting; we put a priority on grain products over meat. We do things you would consider, ah, quite strange. It all means we do things differently. I'm not saying better, just different. Because of that you might go in directions that were closed to us. You might think of uses we never did. You might avoid mistakes, or make others. I don't know. Knowing how Rris think is something you're better suited to."
     "Constable, is this plausible?"
     Jenes'ahn scratched at her cheek and ventured, "Sir, some of the things he does are rotted odd, to put it charitably. This has been mentioned in reports."
     The secretary's pen scratched again. Kehetic frowned and ticked a clawtip against the table. "Constable," he finally said, "the Guild won't oppose Land-of-Water's offering, although apparently the ramifications are still going to require further study. I understand Land-of-Water intends to offer other information as enticement to bring Bluebetter into the deal?"
     "Yes, sir. There's a lot of ancillary knowledge and expertise that goes into making such a rail system and Land-of-Water advisors will be providing that. For the most part it's existing information that has been either cleared by the Guild or has leaked widely already. But there's a fair bite that I doubt industry spies have acquired that Bluebetter will be drooling for."
     "What of these standardized units?"
     "Huhn," Jenes'ahn tapped her fingers together. "That is a little tricky."
     "How so?"
     "It's not a foolish idea. There are plenty of benefits. In fact, it's something that should've been done a long time ago, but hasn't been. For obvious reasons. Now there are strong reasons for doing it: building this new machinery, I understand, requires this sort of precision... making parts in different places; repairs and such. They all need pieces to fit. They need the same measures. If an engine built here needed to be repaired in Bluebetter, the fastest way to do that is to build large numbers of spare parts, and all those parts would need to be the right size.
     "Now Land-of-Water has an opportunity to stake this out and make sure people eat it. There are valid incentives: If they want to join the hunt, they have to follow the leader, a? It isn't a foolish idea."
     "But?" Kehetic prodded.
     "But people don't always like being told what to eat, a? There will be waves."
     "More of them," he said and turned to me again. "What've you got to say about that?"
     "Again, I'm not the best person to ask about how Rris might react," I said. "I imagine Land-of-Water know about that. If they can get some other countries to follow their lead, then the others will be more willing to follow suit. Even if they don't want to deal with Landof-Water, they might deal with the others."
     "You think this rail offering will be enough to do that?"
     I shrugged. "It's a bit more than just a few rails. Do you know what it would take to build a rail line six hundred kilometers between Shattered Water and Red Leaves?"
     "A lot of iron and a lot of work," he said.
     "A. And also things that haven't been done before. The entire route has to be surveyed and mapped down to the meter to find the best path. The incline can't be steep or have sharp bends, so that path will have to be smoothed and graded and reinforced. Gullies will have to be filled. Cuttings will have to be dug through some hills, other will have to be removed completely. Tunnels dug through mountains and bridges built to span ravines.
     "The whole project is going to require new tools and techniques; new metals and materials and machinery. Everything from mining equipment and techniques for the metal that's going to be required, to formulas for blasting powders; new engines and industrial machinery for working metal. Anyone cooperating on such a project will be getting a great deal extra on top of just the rail."
     "And if they just want the knowledge and drop the new measuring systems?"
     "Then they'll find that nobody else will be able to repair their machines and equipment. Foreign parts won't fit their machines and their own parts won't fit with their neighbors. Even different machines of the same type might have parts that can't be used with each other. Everything would have to be built again, and that would cost a lot."
     His muzzle creased again, his ears tipping back. "For someone who claims not to know a lot about us, you have a lot of insights."
     "Machinery always does the same thing. That doesn't change. And I can guess at sensible reactions Rris might make, such as wanting something that's better than you currently have. But when emotions and other... not-logical things like that come into it, then... I wouldn't place bets."
     He snorted, stroking a finger along his jawline. "You say you're not a judge of people, yet you take strays into your home and hearth and say you trust them."
     "I've already got this pair hanging around taking up space," I jerked a thumb toward Jenes'ahn. "What's a few more?"
     The secretary's eyes went wide. Jenes'ahn snarled and Kehetic raised a hand in a calming gesture. "If that's the case," he said to me, "we could always provide a few more officers."
     "Ahhh, that's not necessary," I hastily replied. "Too much of a good thing and all that."
     "Huh, I think you need them around as much as the Guild requires them to be there. These meetings you will be attending are going to be sensitive, in a lot of ways. A great deal's going to pivot on subtleties and diplomacy. Hirht made a laudable decision in sending aesh Smither to deal with the majority of the politics, but you will also most certainly be exposed to it.
     "The constables going along with you will be going as Guild representatives. They'll do their duty. I'm aware you don't like that. You don't approve of it, but you will respect it. You will listen to what they tell you and you will not discuss the proscribed subjects with the Bluebetters or any other Rris. If anyone gives you any trouble over this, you'll simply say they're conditions set by the Mediator Guild and nothing more. Don't cause trouble. The Constables will handle them."
     The other Rris pushed over a small stack of documents. I picked one up: a hefty manual bound in fine leather, closed with a black ribbon and sealed with a dollop of bright orange wax embossed with a geometric pattern. "What are these?" I asked.
     "Lists of proscribed subjects," he said.
     I raised an eyebrow in what was certainly a pointless gesture. "You made lists of things you don't want invented?"
     He looked blank for a second, then his ears twitched back in annoyance. "Of general subjects," he growled. "And guidelines of how to deal with them. If they ask about anything of an uncertain nature you discuss it with the Guild first," he growled, then hissed to Jenes'ahn, "Is this usual? Is he a fool?"
     "I'm still trying to decide, sir," she replied. "He seems to delight in being willfully obstinate."
     "A fool then," Kehetic growled, turning his ears back as he regarded me. "I dislike fools. They cause problems for those around them."
     She narrowed her eyes. "A. That does describe him quite aptly."
     "Then you probably shouldn't be around me," I said. "Then I can't cause you problems, and you aren't breathing over my shoulder. Everyone's happy."
     Jenes'ahn winced and scratched the bridge of her nose with a single clawtip. "Mikah... Rot it all."
     "Your misgivings about this assignment are suddenly far more understandable, Constable," Kehetic remarked to Jenes'ahn.
     "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," she said tiredly, then tapped a claw on the table. "There is something else, sir."
     "And that is?"
     "Those strays Mikah took in," she said, looking uncomfortable. "Something happened."
     "What?"
     She related the events of the previous twenty-four hours quietly and succinctly. He sat motionless and expressionless until she was done, and then for a little longer.
     "You're sure it was damp cough?" he eventually asked.
     "Quite."
     "And who else is aware of this?"
     "The University is aware he took the medication. And Mikah's household is aware of the results. So there's no doubt that by now the Palace is also."
     "Sequester the medication. Bring it to the Guild strongroom. Leave a small sample for the University. No doubt they'll be a great deal more protective the less there is of it."
     "But if they can duplicate it..." Jenes'ahn started.
     "Can they?" Kehetic snapped at me.
     I shook my head. "Doubtful."
     He didn't ask for an explanation. "Ensure it's done today," he said and the other Rris scribbled a note with a graphite stick. "And this cured stray: she will be trouble?"
     "I believe she was House Guard at some time," Jenes'ahn said. "She sold all she owned to get here, but she retained her loyalty blade."
     "Indeed? Then she will follow Guild directives and she won't talk. Discuss this with her, constable," the Guildmaster said and then tipped his head quizzically. "And have you determined why she would give away a life to chase after this one?" He flicked an ear toward me.
     "My sparkling personality?"
     "Shut up, Mikah. No sir. Not entirely, sir."
     Kehetic regarded me again, the way you might study a particularly interesting bug crawling up a window. "Do so," he said to Jenes'ahn without taking his eyes off me. "And you'll use your journey to make sure that your charge reads those and makes himself quite familiar with the terms and restrictions. There won't be any incidents this time, will there."
     "No, sir," Jenes'ahn said.
     "Good," Kehetic said. "Now," he gestured to his assistant, "Mikah, you will wait outside. We have things to discuss."
     I objected. Jenes'ahn snarled at me. I bridled.
     "Mikah," she interrupted with a low hiss. "Please."
     I'd already opened my mouth before it sank in. There were nuances in her expression that I didn't get, but the simple fact she'd said please spoke volumes. I closed my mouth, swallowed my reply along with my pride and nodded.
     Kehetic hadn't blinked. "Sakhi," he said, "show our visitor out. The constable and I will not be disturbed."
     Still annoyed, I followed the secretary out into a bare, chilly hallway with bare spotlesswhite plaster walls and bare floorboards. Several of those boards squeaked loudly underfoot as we walked over them, down to where a small window admitted grey light. For about half an hour we waited there, leaning against walls on opposite sides of the corridor. Although the Rris' ears occasionally twitched toward the closed door at the end of the hall, I couldn't hear anything useful.
     "Do you know what that's about?" I asked, jerking my thumb toward the door.
     "No, sir," he said.
     "Huh, funny that. You being his secretary I'd have thought you'd have known what his plans were."
     "His lordship prefers to keep his intentions to himself," the small Mediator said.
     "How long's he been here? In Shattered Water?"
     Sakhi cocked his head, then said, "A few months. The last lord was relocated."
     I'll bet. After the debacle at Open Fields they'd have figured he dropped the ball big time, or was working to some other schedule. Either way, the way the Guild arm did things in Shattered Water had changed enough that even I'd noticed it.
     There wasn't much else forthcoming from the secretary. He answered questions vaguely or with other questions in the maddening Mediator fashion. Kehetic hadn't just sent him out with me for privacy, he was also there to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn't wander off or do any eavesdropping. So, cold, bored and annoyed, I spent the last fifteen minutes just staring at the Rris until he started to fidget. When Jenes'ahn finally stalked out of her meeting his tail was lashing.
     "What'd you do?" she growled as she led me back out of the Guild.
     "Not a thing," I said. "He's just not very talkative. What were you doing anyway?"
     "Not your concern," she said.
     "Oh? It was probably about me, wasn't it? How is that not my concern?"
     She didn't bite. "Not your concern," she repeated and I heard the plasticky ticking as her toe claws rattled against the floor in time with her steps.
     It was certainly concerning her.
     The ride back was quiet and much as the ride out there had been. The ambience of the city seeped in from outside. Jenes'ahn stewed in her own thoughts. I leafed through the documentation she'd brought and found pages upon pages of tightly-spaced Rris legalese. I was going to need a lot of help going through that.

By late afternoon the day's light was already almost gone. What had been a milky overcast for most of the day had darkened, curdled to a leaden grey underbelly hanging over the city. Fat flakes drifted down and the air was skin-crackling cold against my face as I stepped out of the carriage. I hunkered down into my collar and hurried inside, into the warmth and a busy industry.
     Household staff were already busy packing. Rris servants in the halls were carrying armloads of sheets and blankets and clothes, bearing them away somewhere below stairs. And there were surprises awaiting.
     "They were delivered today," Tich told me, indicating the trio of wooden trunks in the hall. Each was made from carefully polished beech, buffed polished to an almost golden luster, the edges bound with dark leather and brass studs. On each lid was a little badge stamped with the clothier's monogram.
     "Already?" I said. "I wasn't even sure they'd be able to do it in time, let alone ahead of schedule and... this." I gestured to the cases. They were well made, expensive. They say presentation is everything, but that was taking the idea a bit far.
     "Doubtless prepared beforehand, sir," she said.
     "They were expecting me?"
     "That would appear to be the case, sir. Apparently they wished to make an impression."
     "Consider me impressed," I said, moving toward the cases. Jenes'ahn stopped me with a hand on my arm.
     "What?" I asked her.
     "No," she said. "We'll take a look at them first."
     I looked down at her. "I think they might be a bit big for you."
     She didn't look at me. "They could be dangerous," she said.
     "Dangerous," I echoed flatly before I had to ask: "You think they'll explode?"
     "A poisoned needle would be simpler," she said.
     "A..." I blinked at the Rris constable as she stalked past me and crouched by the cases. "What're you talking about?" I demanded, my voice echoing up the stairs, through the halls.
     "You should be careful who you accept things from," she said, squinting closely at a latch before clicking it open.
     Where the hell did that come from? I stared at her as she started to poke through the clothes inside the trunk. What was she on about? Something had changed. "Is this something to do with that little meeting you kicked me out of?" I said. "They tell you something?"
     Eyes flashed molten brass in the lamplight as she turned her head toward me. "Why would you mention that?"
     "I'm concerned." I said, getting annoyed. "Something in that meeting managed to shut you up for a while and now you suddenly you start going on about poison underpants. What's going on? Is it something to do with Open Fields? That investigation that never seems to go anywhere?"
     Toward the end of my stay in Open fields there'd been a formal reception. There'd also been an intruder with a knife who'd managed to get close enough to me that I'd had to bend a candlestick around his head. But from what I'd gathered it'd been a planned setup and not just a random nut. Whenever I'd asked Mediators, they'd said they'd were following it up, but as best I could tell the investigation was just spinning its wheels. Which, considering the influence and scope of the Guild's powers, was odd.
     "Not your concern" she said.
     I clenched my jaw, feeling the simmering indignation inside building to another sort of explosion.
     "Sir?" A calm voice interjected. "If I may?"
     I took a deep breath, swallowing the outburst before I said something that embarrassed me in front of the staff. "Yes, Tich?"
     "Your guest requested to speak with you."
     I nodded. "Where is she?"
     "At this moment she's in the study with her ladyship."
     "Later," I growled, leveling a finger at the Mediator. She blinked slowly, unconcernedly, and returned to her task.
     Another room. That was a good excuse to get out of there before I blew a valve. I left the mediator to sort through my underwear in her hunt for poisonous needles and exploding socks and headed for the study. Tich fell in behind.
     "How is she?" I asked as we passed through the door into the dark living room, heading toward the glow shining under the study door.
     "Remarkably well considering," Tich said. "She has taken food; she is walking."
     "And talking," I said. "She and Chihirae... they've been talking?"
     "A, sir."
     "Do you know... what about?"
     "I wouldn't presume to know, sir," she said.
     Yeah, right. She probably knew exactly what had been said. If the Rris had had electronics, then doubtless every room would have been wired for sound and vision. They didn't, but I was sure that the many pointed and sensitive ears of the staff reported to her exactly what was going on in the household.
     Hell, I didn't need her to have a damn good idea of what they'd been talking about.
     The door was ajar. From beyond I heard quiet voices. Chittering laughter. I knocked.
     "Come in, Mikah."
     A few lamps were lit, not quite enough for my eyes. Across the room my desk and chair stood in front of the drawn drapes: a proper desk and a proper chair that simply weren't de riguer in this part of the Rris world. They weren't being used. Instead the two women were watching me from over by the heater where they'd settled themselves on floor cushions. Across at the bookshelf a wide-eyed adolescent Rris had settled himself cross-legged on the rug and was staring at me over the top of a book. A small stack of the extremely valuable tomes was stacked at his side. It looked like he was having better luck reading them than I'd had.
     "It's okay," I paused to assure Rothi. "They're books. They're supposed to be read."
     His ears pricked up a bit and he gripped the volume a little more closely. It looked like a history book, not one I'd had a chance to read properly. Hell, I had enough trouble keeping up with the present, let alone Rris history. "Ah," he started to say and his ears flicked back again, "I didn't apologize for attacking you."
     I tipped my head and tried not to grin. "Way I recall it, someone was petitioning me for help. How could I refuse."
     "But I..." he caught on fast enough for someone that young. "Yes, sir," he said. "Thank you."
     "Good evening," I greeted the ladies. "Good to see you up and walking again, Ea'rest. Feeling better?"
     "A. Apart from some diarrhea, much, thank you," Ea'rest said.
     Frank to a fault. "Thank's for sharing," I said. "Good to hear. The better bit, that is."
     One ear did flag down. "I think I made a bit of a fool of myself last night. I have to apologize for that."
     "Going for a stroll in that condition wasn't the brightest idea," I offered.
     That wasn't what she'd meant, but her ears twitched and she smiled, glad of the misdirection. Passing out on someone else's bed would be embarrassing, but I'd done worse. "A, it wasn't," she said. "But it seems I owe you something."
     "Nonsense. My fault. My responsibility."
     "Enough," Chihirae interjected. "You can apportion blame some other time. Mikah," she patted the cushion beside her. "Sit yourself."
     I did so, settling on the embroidered cushion that'd been a gift from the far off country of Broken Spine. They were out in the far Northwest, backed up against the Rockies, and as such were some distance removed from happenings in the east. When the news had gone from their embassies to home, and had then been corroborated a couple of times, they'd been desperate for meetings; desperate that they were being left behind or missing out on something. They weren't alone in that. The cushions were some of the thinly disguised tokens of esteem I'd been sent and were quite spectacular in their baroque ornamentation. I leaned back against her. "Huhn. Better."
     "Long meeting, a?"
     "Long day."
     "I thought they would allow you more time to pack. What delayed you?"
     "Secret Squirrel and her boss decided to have a private conversation."
     "Do you know what it was about?"
     "Probably me," I sighed and she bumped her chin against my shoulder. "Anyway, what've you been doing?"
     "Aesh Sitaena and I had some time to talk."
     That sounded dangerous. Talked? About what? There were things that Chihirae would be better off not knowing. "Should I be concerned?"
     A pointed little elbow nudged me. "Quiet, you," she chided. "Interesting talk, indeed. Bandits and storms and creatures in the straw. You do make a habit of meeting women in barns, a? And you don't seem to be good at first impressions."
     "Hey, I thought I did pretty well."
     "As you did with me?" Chihirae asked.
     Ea'rest coughed and looked at me. At us. "I'd wondered about that scar through your shoulder," she said. "It seems that a winter teacher can be quite formidable. A wonder she didn't kill you."
     "Or that you didn't," Chihirae said. "You were employed as a guard?"
     Now our guest looked a bit uncomfortable. "Some time ago, a."
     "You see," Chihirae nudged me again. "Can't you just introduce yourself in a civilized fashion sometimes?"
     I leaned back, feeling a low rumble as she pushed back into my weight. "If I recall," I teased, "there wasn't much chance for introductions. A? You were a bit trigger-happy. Ea'rest had a bit more self-control."
     "Huhn, can you blame us? A sight like you would make a Mediator shed," she retorted. "A, Ea'rest?"
     Our guest's ears twitched back and she looked uncomfortable. "I hate to say it, sir, but you are quite... fearsome."
     "There," Chihirae said triumphantly. "You see?"
     I groaned melodramatically. "Ah! You're so cruel to me."
     Chihirae chittered and bumped her head against me again. "Ah, but you do have your good points."
     In the gloom Ea'rest's eyes glowed subtly as the angle of her head changed, tipping slightly as she watched us. There was calculation going on there; interpreting what she was seeing through filters that worked differently from human. God only knew what she was making of that horseplay.
     "You're okay?" I asked her. "You're being looked after satisfactorily?"
     She blinked. "A. Quite. Thank you."
     "You have everything you need? Rothi is happy?"
     "A. Very." She turned to watch the adolescent, who was obliviously buried in a volume. "He hasn't had a chance to see this many books before. I hope it isn't a problem."
     "He's an intelligent boy," Chihirae said. "Very much so."
     Yeah, he'd built his own kite from nothing but travelers' tales and bits of scrap. "A, I think he might like to meet with Chaeitch," I agreed. "But, that's going to have to wait. I have to go away for a while. Her Ladyship here has explained that?"
     Chihirae elbowed me again.
     "A," Ea'rest said, scratched at her forearm, scattering a small cloud of shed fur. "It's important, she explained that."
     "A," I sighed as my hairy cushion idly stroked my hair. "Important. I'd like to be able to stay, but I don't have much say in the matter so I go where I'm sent. It's likely to be for the winter, returning in spring, which means I won't be around. But I'll do what I can to make sure you're looked after. You said you were thinking about that suggestion I'd made. A tavern?"
     Ea'rest's ears twitched back and she looked uncertain, glancing from me to Chihirae. "I'd hoped... I gave that some thought and... I'm no farmer, that I'm certain of, but I can cook; I can deal with people. I can do this. If you're offering a chance... I would like to take it."
     "Huhn," Chihirae rumbled from behind me but otherwise held her counsel.
     I nodded. "If you're willing to work at it, I can give you the chance. I can leave orders to make sure you're provided with capital and assistance. I know people who know people who should be able to assist with property or land or whatever else is required. As far as money goes, I don't think that's going to be a problem."
     "I did have some..." she started to say and then slumped and waved a shrug. Her ears were laid back. "I can sell my blade if that will help."
     I shook my head. "Not necessary."
     "It's..."
     "I've been told what that blade means. I suspect it's worth more to you than you'd ever get for it. Keep it."
     She shuddered visibly, closed her eyes for a second and said something I didn't catch.
     "She said, 'thank you'," Chihirae offered quietly in my ear.
     "A," Ea'rest shuddered again, then inhaled hard, composing herself. "Thank you. From both of us, thank you."
     "You're quite welcome."
     "But, why... all this? Why are you doing it?"
     "Why?" I looked up at the ceiling, rubbed my chin as I thought that over. "Well, because you were kind to me when you certainly didn't have to be; because I owe you at least this much; because I can; and because I think it's the right thing to do. I think that covers it."
     A clawed hand scratched at my head, stroking through my hair. "You see," Chihirae chittered, "I told you he has his good points."

Meals don't hold the same sort of meaning to Rris as they do to humans.
     They aren't a gregarious species who cluster for eating, turning the activity into an impromptu social bonding reinforcing ceremony. No, they're descended from solitary predators who hunted alone and defended their kill and territory from interlopers, and that's carried over into their society. Meals aren't so much social occasions as almost... excuses to gather — constructed by necessity as focuses around which multiple individuals could gather to conduct necessary business. Sharing your food with strangers carries all sorts of connotations — for all parties — and they aren't always the sort of associations humans might make.
     I knew this intellectually, but the social ape lurking in the depths of my hind brain interpreted things differently. Sitting around the table, the warm air filled with the smells of cooking food and fresh bread, part of me felt... at home. As if I were part of something. I couldn't be sure exactly how the other occupants of the room felt, but I suspected that whatever it was, it wasn't that. They were spread out around the periphery of the big table, Chihirae closest to me but still at a distance that humans might consider rude, our house guests across the table from us. On shift, Rohinia sat sentinel at one end of the table, watching, listening to the rest of us as we ate.
     Rris are predominantly carnivores. They preferred meat, preferentially and as a dietary necessity. The vegetables and fruit they cultivated were for flavor, texture, or sometimes simply due to practicality. They certainly enjoyed the variation, but they preferred their meat. Mealtimes with them are something that takes some getting used to. Jaws champed and bolted strips of near-raw meat; bones were cracked and sucked clean; rock-crusted bread dipped into the dripping juices pooling on their plates. White whiskers and chops were stained red and eyeshine flashed as heads turned to and fro.
     The conversation around the table was easy and relevant — questions about myself, about my past and about what was going to happen. Rohinia sat quietly, watching and listening in case the subjects drifted into forbidden territories, but for the most part the talk stayed safely mired in mundanity.
     Ea'rest seemed earnest about the restaurant idea. I didn't peg her as a wide-eyed idealist. She'd been a guard; she'd doubtless had a past that'd had more than a single brush with bloody reality. I couldn't have been sure about that, but I'd known guys who'd come home from the eastern wars who'd had the same sort of mindset: they'd wanted peace, quiet, boredom. They'd wanted some land away from it all where they could do some farming in peace. They usually didn't stick it out. Ea'rest hadn't told me exactly what her story was, but I imagined it was something like that.
     And running a tavern wouldn't exactly be a piece of cake. It'd certainly be more complex... more interesting than running a farm, but it'd be just as easy to run the business into the ground. I figured she probably had some concept of what would be involved in such an enterprise, and I could give her some backing and perhaps even some tips to give her an edge. What I wasn't so sure about, was whether or not she was someone who could stay the course. She'd given up on the farming game; would she do the same here? I didn't know her well enough to make that judgment. Well, I'd help her on this, as I'd promised. I'd bankroll and support her, but in the long run it'd be up to her and her efforts as to whether the endeavor sank or swam.
     I made sure that Tich was filled in on the details. She'd be looking after the house, and also hosting Ea'rest and Rothi while I was gone. She'd also be the one to find people who could help Ea'rest; perhaps officials who could grease wheels or work around some of the bureaucracy that was bound to be encountered in such an endeavor. If some bribery or undocumented taxations were required, that wouldn't be a problem. Hell, for me, money simply wasn't a problem. Tich accepted it all as if it were the most natural request in the world and assured me it would be done.
     Jenes'ahn couldn't have found any infernal devices in my new clothes. Staff had packed them away into the trunks, ready for the next morning. I still had a few final items to prepare: some last personal clothes and items to go into my pack. I spent a half hour getting those stowed away, last of all closing the lid on the wooden art case and sliding it into its protective sleeve. I hoped I'd have time to use it.
     The folio the Mediator Lord had given me sat on the desk, the seal unbroken. I stared at the packet on the lacquered surface, the orange wax lump with its embossed mark glaring back at me. It was the last thing I wanted to deal with.
     "You look worried. I think." Chihirae paused at the threshold, watching me, then stepped inside. "A problem?"
     "Ah, no," I shook my head. "No."
     She strolled over. Slowly, not in any hurry. She eyed the desk. "No? What is that?"
     "It's from the Mediators. Apparently, it's a list of things I'm not supposed to discuss with... well, with Rris."
     "And we all know how good you are with lists, a?"
     "Oh, that was almost like a joke only not funny."
     Chihirae snorted. "You haven't even looked at it, a?"
     "I've been trying to work up the courage," I said. "I suppose it'll give me something to read, though."
     A slight chitter. "Optimistic, aren't you," she said in a lightly mocking tone, which was belied when her ears twisted back and she stared at the manual again. After a couple of heartbeats she asked: "Mikah, are you concerned about this? It's not going to be like... some of those other times?"
     I sighed. "I don't know. There's... something going on. They say they wouldn't be sending me if it was dangerous, but there's something going on." I lifted a hand, gestured uselessly. "It could be that it's risky going, but it'd be more dangerous for me to stay here."
     Chihirae didn't say anything, just stood there. After a while I offered, "You don't have to go. You can stay."
     "No." She shook herself, like when I blew in her ear. "No. As I said, so I'll do. I won't go against that. And... I think you're going to need me, a?"
     I tried to think of an answer for that; something that wouldn't be a lie. After several long seconds all I could come up with was, "Thank you."
     Her feline features pursed in a smile at that. "Hai, it won't be so bad. It might be fun. Seeing another country. And there will be soldiers and Mediators."
     "Aww, I thought you said fun."
     A chitter and she reached up, a stubby-fingered hand running leather-smooth pads down the skin of my cheek. "Don't be like that. It will be... interesting."
     "Really?" I asked, touching her cheek in return, gently swirling my finger through the longer tuft of fur that grew down from her cheekbone. Still more hair than my beard. "Not too interesting, I hope."
     She nipped at my fingers and flashed mocking teeth at me. "Huhn, that might depend on you, a?
     "Hmmm?"
     "Well, we will be travelling in carriages. There will be people all around."
     "Yes. So?"
     "So, will we be able to do this?" she asked and grinned broad and white and sharp as she insinuated hands under my clothes.
     I had to admit, it was a very good question.

Next morning was an early start. It was still night outside when Tich roused me at some godawful hour. I spent a few minutes poking the furry lump in the bed next to me to get her stirring before giving up and going about my business. There wasn't really time for my customary constitutional — there was nothing but blackness outside — so I headed straight for the shower. A short time later a hairy body pushed into the shower stall, demanding her space under the hot water.
     And I thought she didn't like the shower. It certainly made my morning: a sodden Rris looks... hilarious.
     Breakfast was more than I expected. The cook laid out a full spread: strips of smoked salmon and bison steak, fried eggs and potatoes, bread, butter, small berry tarts and tomatoes and grapefruit juice. I wasn't sure how hungry I was, but managed to stow away a respectable amount. Chihirae and the Mediators packed away more than you'd expect folks of their size to be able to handle, but their higher metabolism burns it off fast.
     There was time to wash afterwards, doing teeth and rinsing with salt water. And on my way back down Tich materialized at my shoulder to tell me Chaeitch and party had arrived and was requesting to see me.
     Chaeitch was waiting in the living room along with two others. Rraerch, I already knew. Rraerch aesh Smither — the brains behind Smither Works. Chaeitch may have had the engineering chops, but he wasn't a businessman. Rraerch handled that side of things. She was from a well-established linage. She had connections and all sorts of places, from employees in the Smither industries to people in the rarified airs of the halls of power. She knew the ins and outs of the Rris business world. And she was comfortable enough around me.
     Perhaps that was part of the secret of her success.
     The other Rris, however... female, I thought. Young, looking around with wide eyes which meant she hadn't been there before. Scruffier clothes, almost tatty. She seemed familiar.
     "Morning and waking," Chaeitch greeted me. He was dressed to the nines, in a goldembroidered tunic under a mauve roadcoat trimmed with green and silver. A bundle lay at his feet.
     "This isn't morning," I grumbled. "This is almost yesterday. Greetings, Rraerch. Good to see you."
     "You also, Mikah," she replied.
     "Sir," the other Rris greeted me.
     "Who's this?" I asked.
     Chaeitch snorted. "Mikah, you're... you've met before. Makepeace aesh Tehi, from the University."
     I thought for a second. That was a name I remembered. It was a literal translation of her name and I hadn't met many Rris with whom I could do that. "The researcher. You were helping. Seeing if there'd been any records of someone like me before."
     She ducked her head. "Yes, sir."
     That surprised me. "The University's sending you?"
     "Huhrr... Yes, sir."
     "There's a problem?" Rraerch ventured, looking from me to Makepeace.
     "Uhh, no. No problem," I said. She was junior. Very junior. I wondered why they'd chosen her over one of the senior researchers. "No problem. Welcome aboard, Makepeace."
     "Thank you, sir," she said.
     Chaeitch grinned at me. "You're ready?"
     "Oh, yes. Only a few dozen trunks, as far as I can tell. So we're travelling light."
     "Got a long way to go," he said. "And you'll be glad of those things. And perhaps this." He scooped up the bundle at his feet and tossed it to me. I caught it awkwardly: It was bulky and unwieldy and damned heavy. When I peeled a corner away, pale leather was revealed beneath.
     "Finally done?"
     "A," he said. "Took a bit of work, but we got it finished."
     I hefted the bundle, then unrolled it and held the results up. It was a coat: a long duster of made of heavy leather of a grey so pale it was almost white. There was a heavy mantle around the shoulders; the tails hung down to my calves. The inside lining was a deep felt, black as coal and soft as sin. The whole assembly weighed several kilos. It clinked when I hefted it.
     Rraerch and Makepeace looked confused.
     "A coat?" Rraerch asked dubiously. "That's all? After how you were going on about it I was expecting more."
     "It's a very good coat," Chaeitch said, then asked me, "That's to your satisfaction?"
     "It all worked out?"
     "Huhn, a, it did. Not easy."
     "What wasn't easy?" Jenes'ahn asked as she stalked, like a cloud of bad attitude in her charcoal Mediator's garb, already weathered and stained by mud and sun and rain.
     "Getting this done in time," I said, holding it up. "They only just finished it."
     "You need more clothes?"
     "Winter clothes, a. I didn't come here with any. I need them."
     She snorted and eyed me, obviously trying to read something in my expression. Let her try. She might even get it right someday.
     When we stepped out onto the front porch dawn was still a suggestion off in the east. A blush of salmon and ochre lay along the distant horizon where a haze of clouds glowed as the first light caught it. Overhead, the sky was clear, the blues and purples so deep they were almost black. A few final faint stars still glimmered, fading in the rising light. I stopped at the top of the steps and the Rris behind me also halted as I shivered and shrugged down into my new heavy coat, then took a pair of gloves from my pocket and pulled them on. They were made for me, not so long ago, made from rough leather with crude stitching. I flexed my fingers, hearing the leather creak and still smiling at the memory of getting them. Then I looked around at the activity in front of the house.
     Whiteness softened the world, blanketing every surface. Snow covered the ground, banking up against bushes. Icicles hung from the eaves of the house. Frost rimed branches. A thin mist curled across the ground and the air was bitingly cold, turning my breath into clouds that hung in the stillness in front of me.
     A string of three waiting coaches and their attendant teams looped around the driveway. They weren't the carriages we usually used. These were bigger and bulkier, the Land Rovers of carriages, designed for a long haul over long distances over rough roads. Double cabs were slung on rudimentary suspension over a bogey of four large, spoked wheels. Teams of four elk shifted restlessly in their harnesses, wisps of steam rising from their backs. The cabs were freshly lacquered in what Rris probably considered black, but to my eyes was a dark, glossy burgundy that glowed in the rising dawn light. Trim was all polished brass, the luster dampened by a patina of frost. Luggage was on the back, the trunks stacked and lashed down under an oiled leather canopy drawn down over them. And while the crests on the doors were those of a transport company, the small standards on the corners of the driver's bench hanging limply from their stanchions were royal patterns.
     Behind the coaches were more prosaic wagons; heavy four-wheeled wagons with arched canvass covers over the cargo beds for goods and passengers. Troopers mounted on their cervine steeds watched and waited off on the sidelines, reduced to unearthly shapes in the morning mist.
     More Rris were bustling around the carriages and animals, loading the stragglers of a procession of boxes and trunks into the wagons. In the morning gloom they were shaggy silhouettes with twitching tufted ears. Their voices growled and hissed, breath wreathed their muzzles as they stalked through the chill.
     Ahead of me Jenes'ahn stopped and looked back. "Anything wrong?" she rumbled.
     "No," I said.
     "Then we should get going. You and her ladyship, you're in the second coach."
     I nodded and stepped down onto the gravel drive. Heads turned towards me. The guards and the escorts might have been briefed about me, but a fair few had obviously never seen me before. In the dawn light they stared as Chihirae and I crossed the drive to the waiting coach. It was the second in line and I wondered why there was smoke coming from the roof.
     Because it was heated, I discovered. When I clambered in after Chihirae I found warmth on my face. A black, iron box under the seat in the front corner of the cab was shedding warmth. Not a great deal, but better than outside. The heater was stoked from a small hatch in the exterior and didn't vent anywhere in the cab, which was a sensible precaution. Carbon monoxide poisoning isn't a lot of fun.
     The rest of the interior was... comfortable. Ridiculously, plushily so. It was larger than other cabs I'd used, the ceiling high that I had plenty of headroom. Everything was padded with plush velvet in tan, cream, golds and greens. There were drapes on the windows and frosted screens that could be drawn. There was seating for four: a bench at the front facing another at the rear, again cushioned and upholstered in velvet. There were gilt touches, small lamps and even cup holders. It felt like climbing into a damn Faberge egg. The cab rocked on its rudimentary suspension as I sat opposite Chihirae who settled back in her own seat, adjusting her posterior to work her tail into the slot at the back.
     At least we wouldn't spend the entire trip crammed into a single coach. There were enough coaches that there'd only be a couple of people per coach, and the seating arrangements were up to us. With three weeks travel ahead of us, I figured we'd be changing around a fair bit.
     "This is better than I'd expected," Chihirae said, looking around the cab. There were small cupboards concealed in the upholstery. She poked around, opening a few. There were bottles nestled inside one of them. "Ah, much better."
     She'd spent one uncomfortable journey across the country already. They really hadn't treated her decently then. The Land-of-Water government had sent for her because someone had told them she meant something to me. They'd seen her as a solution to a problem, so they'd yanked her away from her life and dropped her into mine without much concern for her needs and wants.
     "You like?" I asked.
     She was inspecting one of the bottles. "Oh, I've only read about some of these vintages. A. I like."
     I grinned. "Enjoy it. It's the least they can do."
     Departure came without any fanfare. There was a slight lurch, then the wheels scrunched on gravel and snow as the coach swung out and the procession set off down the drive. Outside the window, fir trees passed by, their branches bowed with snow. Then the gates and gatehouse. The old trees on the avenue were deciduous, their bare branches spreading over the street. There were more vehicles out there: more cargo wagons and more mounted troops. Voices shouted. Teamsters switched their animals and tugged reigns and moved their vehicles to join our convoy. We slowed momentarily and I flinched as the door opened, a blast of chill air preceding Rohinia as he neatly scrambled up into the cab. He pulled the door closed before sitting himself down beside Chihirae, where he could see me.
     "You're settled?" he asked.
     "A," I said. "You're riding with us?"
     "For now. Jenes'ahn and I will be sharing the duty. I've got this shift." He looked from Chihirae to me. "Everything is satisfactory?"
     "It was close for a while, but then her ladyship has found the wine, so everything's fine now."
     Rohinia looked confused and Chihirae had to stifle a laugh. "Sir, that was intended to be humorous."
     "Was it?" Rohinia's muzzle wrinkled as he regarded me. "Better luck next time."

Our convoy trundled along on its way. We headed away from the lake, southeast along icy lanes, past buildings frosted white, past fences hung with sparkling lines of icicles until we left the city proper through the remains of an old gate. Morning came. The sun climbed higher. The light coming in the window helped warm the cab a bit more, but the day outside was still cold. On the outskirts were the workshops, the warehouses and factories and storehouses and granaries. Then there was farmland.
     From the edge of the city, spreading out outwards for kilometer after kilometer, lay the checkerboard fields and hedgerows of the farmland surrounding Shattered Water and stretching away to the wilderness beyond. The green of summer was gone, buried under snow that blanketed the fields, banked up against hedges. Copses of denuded trees were patches of brown scraping their branches across the winter sky. The world was stark and cold in the growing light.
     Most of the land was pasture for stock. Animals dotted the white fields, the shaggy mountains that were bison dusted with ice and rime. I saw elk clustering around hay being distributed from wagons. Fields lay fallow and bare. Orchards were rows of bare trees standing in ranks amidst unbroken snow. Every so often we passed a hamlet or farmhold: a cluster of buildings so much like the one I'd first stumbled into. Often Rris would come out to watch the procession pass, the cubs running along until the guards shoo'd them off.
     And it was so slow. I watched for several minutes as we passed by one field.
     "Those animals interesting?" Rohinia asked.
     I blinked out of my reverie and shook my head. "No. Not the animals. It's just... I could just about walk faster than this."
     "Not many other options," he said. "Not until your metal roads at least."
     "It still seems strange. I don't know if it's the same for Rris, but for my kind it's difficult having to do something slowly after having had a faster method."
     "An example."
     "Well, like this: you might have been quite happy using a wagon and it suited your need well. Then you get a vehicle which travels a dozen times faster. After using that for a time, you find it's difficult to go back to a wagon. It's inconvenient."
     "I do prefer riding," he said. "It is faster."
     "And given the choice you would prefer not to use a wagon, a?"
     His ears twitched. "Given the choice, a. In your home, how long would this journey take?"
     I shrugged. "Under a day. Perhaps under an hour if you flew."
     A pause. "That would indeed be convenient."
     "A. It is. The problem was it became too convenient. Everyone expected that they would have a vehicle. And when they got them, they moved to live in places that were far from where they worked. They spent the same amount of time travelling that they would have if they lived closer and used more sensible transport. They jammed the roads. Then they claimed they couldn't do without their vehicles and needed more roads, which they also jammed. There were a lot of problems."
     "Your authorities didn't control this?"
     "There was a lot of money involved," I said. "And the finest politicians you could buy."
     "Ah," he mused. "Politics. And you don't have Guild intermediaries."
     "No. We don't have such an... an organization. Even the federal government has limitations on what they can dictate. There are civil liberties to consider."
     His muzzle creased. "A. We know that. And so many of those liberties become considered self-indulgences when they impose upon the lives of others."
     "You think people shouldn't have rights?"
     "I think that given a chance people'll bite off as much as they possibly can, whether they can swallow it or not," he replied. "You said yourself that a remarkable convenience was turned into a problem by sheer greed. But you would still prefer that to this, wouldn't you?" he waved a hand, gesturing at the coach.
     "Absolutely."
     Chihirae smirked. Rohinia's eyes narrowed. "I'm not sure if that was intended to be humorous. But I think that most people would make the same decision, to put their own convenience over practicality."
     "Sometimes the convenience can be practical," I countered. "We're wasting weeks travelling to and from Bluebetter. There're probably a lot of people in Shattered Water who'd rather use that time to do something constructive."
     "Doubtless there are," he said. "And you're right: this time should be spent constructively." And he reached into a pocket somewhere in the recesses of his coat and produced a familiar sealed folder, which he then tossed over onto my lap. "You almost left that sitting on your desk. Teacher, perhaps you could assist your student here with his studies."
     Chihirae gave me an exasperated look. I shrugged. "Ooops."

That first day passed by as slowly as the convoy moved. The road was paved and well maintained; the bridges we crossed were solidly built from stone, but it was still a rattling ride. Despite the suspension and cushions you could feel the jarring of iron wheels on the stones. And there were disturbing occasions when they hit ice or packed snow and you could feel the coach slewing sideways. But the elk were surefooted and the drivers knew what they were doing, so we stayed on the road and we made steady progress.
     The scenery changed slowly throughout the day. Farms became less frequent, the buildings smaller and more spartan. There were more and more trees: stands and woods of scrubby little elm and ash and cedar and maple with scraggly undergrowth, all scratchy bare branches under the winter sun.
     It was almost as dull as the documents the Mediator Guild had prepared for me. Chihirae assisted me with them. She sat beside me and helped as I struggled through page after page of hand-printed Rris legalese. They didn't want me doing any dealing with anything involving weapons or military technology, and that included guns and blades and chemical areas. I wasn't to discuss anything to do with industrial or manufacturing technologies and techniques, agricultural and manufacturing concerns without Mediator representation present. Anything that might infringe upon Guilds' specialties was out of bounds. I couldn't disclose any information that Guilds may have regarded as their own industrial secrets to agencies outside those Guilds. That information would have to pass through Mediator approval. And any new innovations I introduced that didn't fall under any specific Guild jurisdiction would have to be vetted to determine just how it was implemented and who could have control.
     There were lists of Guilds, and they were a nightmare of interconnecting and interfering relationships and jurisdictions. There were the large Merchant Guilds — consortiums of traders and merchants who banded together for protection in certain markets and routes, and also utterly unabashed price and goods supply control. Then there were metal working Guilds, Foundry Guilds, Transportation Guilds, Merchants guilds, Farmers Guilds, Meatworkers Guilds, Shipwrights, Herders, Innkeepers, Clothiers, dye makers, Leatherworkers... and on and on to lawyers and bakers and candlestick makers. They were like unions in that they were fiercely protective of their business interests; but then again they weren't like unions. They paid fees and dues and other tariffs to governments and in return they had official licenses that gave them exclusive rights to their fields and meant that legally others couldn't compete with them. Or even deal with anything involving their specific field. And put controls on quality and output of produced goods. Which pretty much sealed the lid on competition and innovation.
     The Guilds weren't international institutions. Each nation — sometimes individual cities — had its own Guilds, and those operated with their own rules and regulations within their realms. Cooperation within guilds extended across borders as a sort of professional courtesy, but not much beyond that. They were all individual — and sometimes competing — entities, so an agreement made with a branch in one city in one country might not be honored in another city in that same country. The outcome of something like that would depend upon which opinion held sway in the upper halls of the guild hall at that time.
     And those Guilds further fractured into subsets of specializations. For example: the Metalworkers Guild and the Merchant Guilds each encompassed scores of lesser guilds, all forming their own smaller organizations within the overarching umbrella of their parent Guilds. And all of them had their own trade secrets that they protected with a secrecy and paranoia that made the Cold War look like a hippy share-fest.
     I wasn't to do anything that might leak those trade secrets. Due to their contracts with the governments, the Guilds effectively had a stranglehold on their trades. If I were to divulge those secrets, even if they were things I considered common knowledge, the Guilds would have grounds for appeal or legal action with their governments.
     "Is this serious?" I asked. Chihirae looked from me to the Mediator.
     "It's quite serious," Rohinia said. "The Guilds have been wanting to get what they can from you. When they see that might not be possible, they claim that you are carrying knowledge that by rights, and by law, should be theirs."
     "That sounds... Ridiculous."
     He tipped his hand in a shrug. "It's technicality. Some institutions are feeling threatened. They don't want to confront the Guild straight on at this point, so they're using maneuvers like this."
     "But is it law? Can they say that? What they consider secret knowledge I learned in school!"
     "By decree the Guilds are the ones entitled to handle secret knowledge related to their professions. You aren't in the Guilds so you shouldn't have access to this knowledge. It's a small but valid point of law. It's petty and never what was intended, but then neither are you."
     "Yeah, I get that a lot," I said.
     "But the Mediator Guild can stop this, can't you?" Chihirae asked.
     Another tip of his hand. "In time, A. But it is within the letter of the law as it is written, so initially the claim has to be heard."
     The timing for all this seemed remarkably pat. And there were things they hadn't told me. "This wouldn't have something to do with this trip?"
     His expression didn't flicker. "They're not unconnected."
     "It's wise to move away from Shattered Water where you have the government on my side?"
     "Whatever makes you assume they're supporting you?"
     That took me aback.
     He snorted. "A, they are. For now. Until your usefulness is outweighed by your liabilities."
     "What does that mean?"
     He eyed me silently for a few seconds, then said, "It means that there is a point at which the knowledge and usefulness you can provide would be outweighed by the protests and actions of other nations. They will support you while they see a gain in it, but if everything you can offer is [vetoed] by governments or Guild, then what good are you? Can you be certain Hirht would continue to support you if other nations declared war?"
     I swallowed. Chihirae looked horrified. "It's not going to come to that, is it?" she asked.
     "The Guild is striving to prevent it," Rohinia said.
     "And how does this," I tapped the manual with a finger, "help?"
     "That," he said levelly, "will help stop more randomly thrown stones from muddying the waters. It'll be a gesture that at least we are heeding Government and Guild concerns by controlling just what sort of information is released; it'll help stop them from drowning us in trivial legalities."
     That carried the fragrant scent of bullshit. How much of that was true, how much of it more of the lines that the Mediator Guild spun? They lied, I knew that. They'd go to ruthless lengths to hide any sign of unrest within the Guild from outside eyes. Their Guild was about the only one that spanned countries with a unified charter. Fracturing or outright dissent within the Guild and their decrees could nullify the charter that gave them authority over even governments, and I'd seen what they'd do to keep such internal unrest hidden from outsiders.
     Was that a reason they'd brought Chihirae along? As a reminder? A leash? A hostage?
     "What?" she asked.
     I'd been staring at her. I bit my lip and shook my head. "Just trying to see how that's all going to work," I said and flipped the pages again, scowling at the serried ranks of Rris characters there, like scratches a prisoner might carve into the walls of his cell to mark away the days. "You've covered just about everything here. Is there anything I am free to discuss?"
     One of his ears twitched. "Huhn, we think information that's not of a technical nature should be acceptable."
     "What does that mean?" Chihirae asked.
     "Ideas," he said." Concepts that can't be hoarded. Sciences. Medicines and health, astronomy, mathematics and such."
     I thought about that. Certainly that sort of information was different. You couldn't directly use it and it wouldn't have the same sort of instant impact as simply handing over the plans for rotary combine or steam turbine would, but in the long run it would still have an effect. I guessed they were thinking along the 'teach a man to fish' school of thought.
     "You think that's safer?" I asked.
     Rohinia leaned back, looking out the window at nothing in particular. "Academia is... different from the Guilds. There's squabbling, but it usually leads to [something], not wars."
     "I don't know that word."
     "Books," Chihirae offered. "Papers that scholars write about their subjects. They become research and reference material for others. Do you understand?"
     Dissertations? "A. I think I understand."
     "They can bicker about those with one another," Rohinia said, "But they tend to keep their disputes at the level of angry correspondence which the Universities can deal with. The Guild feels that as long as you aren't providing devices or materials that could be interpreted as providing a direct material or military advantage, then it's acceptable. And we are quite aware that any kind of information you provide could be bent to such uses, but if it's abstract enough, then people are going to have to apply themselves before they can use it."
     It felt a little half-baked to me. As if rules were being made just for the sake of the rules. Perhaps they were. The Mediator Guild was fumbling its way through unfamiliar territory but couldn't be seen to be weak. Perhaps they were just making these decisions so they'd been seen actually doing something.
     "You have an opinion on this?" Rohinia asked.
     "An opinion?" Did it matter if I did? I looked at Chihirae, then at the Mediator and shrugged. "It'll be something to put on the table," I hedged.
     He regarded me dubiously. "That means?"
     "I mean that when some high-born who's accustomed to getting his way demands that I talk with him, there'll be something I can say without offending him or pissing the Guild off."
     "I suppose there's a first time for everything," Chihirae chittered.

We followed the road east, away from the lake and the city of Shattered Water. The low overcast continued; the sun just a bright smear in the grey clouds. The landscape was broad, rolling hills and dales. None of the hills were particularly high, none of the valleys particularly deep. They were just vast undulations in the land, rising and falling like gentle swells on a sea. Farms were smaller, further apart. Farmholds and fields and logging enterprises scratching away at the edges of the wilderness.
     Traffic was sparse, but it was there. Perhaps twice a messenger or courier on fast elks overtook us. More often we passed by traffic going the other way. Where the road was too narrow to pass safely, the guards made the other traffic pull aside while we proceeded.
     Around about midday we rattled to a stop and I was told we had a chance to stretch and get some food. It was the middle of nowhere: a stretch of road along the crest of a rolling hill surrounded by nothing but forests and snow under a drab grey sky.
     Rris milled around the wagons, stalking around to stretch out the kinks of the ride and eating salted meat and bread. I munched on my own sandwich, a mug of hot wine in the other hand as I watched. There were a lot in the party, more than I'd seen that morning. There were over twenty guards riding on elk, more in the wagons and riding shotgun on the carriage. Speaking of which, I couldn't help but notice the weapons they were carrying weren't flintlocks. They were slimmer, not nearly as long or bulky and lacking the clumsy flint mechanisms. They looked suspiciously like cavalry carbines.
     Snow squeaked under a Rris footpads. Chaeitch stepped up beside me, worrying at a lump of salted meat with pointed teeth. He saw where I was looking and cocked a quizzical ear.
     "The Guild can't have been happy about that," I murmured.
     He swallowed a mouthful of meat and grinned. He needed to floss. "They were already metal before the Guild became involved," he said. "Even the Guild can't unmake an idea."
     "Why do I think they'd like to be able to?"
     A white cloud huffed around his muzzle as he snorted and took another bite, swallowed hard. "And how's the coat?"
     "Good. It hangs well."
     "I was worried. The weight seemed... excessive."
     "I don't intend to do any swimming in it, but it's easier to wear than I'd thought it would be."
     "Huhn. The smiths usually make such for elks, so it was an interesting challenge for them. The potters thought it odd."
     "Tricky questions?"
     Another snort. "Rot, no. There's been so much new stuff being requested by various departments... Neither the smiths nor the potters made any mention."
     He stayed by me as I strolled down the length of our convoy. Guards stared at me and then tried to act as if they hadn't been. One stared until a nearby officer noticed and cuffed him around the ears. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Chaeitch's tail lashing.
     "Don't worry about it," I said. "They'll get their eyes full."
     He chewed and considered that. "That doesn't really make a lot of sense."
     I'd realized it'd lost something in the translation as well. "Ummm, no. When you say it like that, it doesn't," I conceded and shrugged. "I meant they'll be seeing enough of me."
     "Ah," Chaeitch acknowledged. He polished off the last of his lunch with a noisy gulp, licked his chops and then produced his pipe and the little accessories packet. As we walked he went through the little ritual of producing some leaf, tamping it down, using the little striking wheel to drop sparks into the bowl and puffing it to life. The smoke was light and sweet and was most certainly not tobacco; that particular plant was still in Africa somewhere, along with cotton and a whole greenhouse worth of other flora. For the Rris hemp was the main source of a whole range of both practical and recreational products.
     Chaeitch held the old pipe in one hand and drew deeply, holding it for a couple of heartbeats before blowing smoke out through his nostrils. I made sure I was upwind. The stuff was potent, but didn't affect him in the same way it would a human and I didn't need a contact high.
     "Sir?" a guard stepped forward. Behind him a knuckle of other guards watched and I thought I saw some amusement there. Chaeitch moved to intercept, then stopped.
     "Huhn," he snorted. "Mikah, it's your swimming friend."
     I took another look at the guard: usual white and tawny muzzle with grey patches and black speckling; the armor of a royal guard, all polished steel and quilted padding with sword and pistol slung at waist. But the pattern of speckles on the muzzle was familiar. I did know him.
     "Blunt?" I ventured.
     "A, sir," he said, looking from me to Chaeitch uncertainly.
     "Hai, don't worry," Chaeitch assured him. "Congratulations that he recognized you; Mikah thinks we all look the same."
     "Oh, thanks a lot." I rolled my eyes and he smirked and blew smoke into the air. "What're you doing here anyway? I didn't think your squad was with us."
     "They wanted more arms on this trip," he said. "They requested me. Apparently because I'd worked with you before."
     Chaeitch made an amused sound.
     Some time ago Blunt had been one of the guards escorting me through Shattered Water. Someone had attacked the convoy, killed a lot of the guards and almost killed us. We'd ended up with our backs to the river and the only way out was to swim for it. Rris don't swim very well at all, so I'd had to haul him across. Almost drowned the pair of us doing it.
     "Well, welcome on board," I said. "I hope you've either learned to swim or lost some weight."
     He looked confused.
     "I think that's his idea of a joke," Chaeitch provided. "For some reason only he understands, they don't actually have to be amusing."
     "Huhhr, yes, sir," Blunt said, still looking uncertain. "Sir, there's a question..." he ventured.
     "A?"
     "There were questions about this journey," Blunt said quickly. "That it's risky; that the Bluebetters used coercion to persuade you and will try and take you by force."
     I looked at Chaeitch, raised an eyebrow. "Hey! You could have told me."
     He snorted. "Amazing how they're so much better informed than we are."
     "I don't recall any coercion," I said to Blunt. "I don't recall any mention of threats or that Bluebetter intended anything of the kind, which would certainly cause them more trouble than any benefits would be worth. However..."
     "Mikah..." Chaeitch cautioned.
     "However, my last trip was supposed to be easy. It got... interesting very suddenly. You might want to keep your eyes open, a?"
     "A, sir," he said. "Thank you, sir."
     Chaeitch and I watched him hurry back to his squad. I turned and ambled away from the convoy, into the scraggly line of trees along the road.
     "Tell them there's nothing to worry about and they'll think you're hiding something from them, a?" Chaeitch puffed reflectively.
     "A," I agreed.
     "But don't you think that was a little... ah, excessive? You might alarm them."
     "I think I'd prefer them alarmed. I still get the feeling I wasn't told everything about this trip."
     The line of trees thinned, the hillside falling away. We stood there a while. He puffed on his pipe and I sipped warmed wine and looked out across frozen hills rolling away to the haze on the horizon. And trees: uncountable numbers of brown and grey winter-bare branches and snow as far as I could see. Some early American explorer looking at the virgin forests of the new world had once said a squirrel could climb a tree at the Atlantic shore and make its way across the country by leaping from branch to branch, never touching the ground.
     Well, that was hyperbole perhaps, but while the Rris hadn't made the impact on the local flora that mankind had, there was still a lot of timber there. Thousands of square kilometers of wilderness forests into which villages and farms had only just started to encroach. And the road scribed a thin white line through it all.
     We followed it. Paving stones still rumbled under the iron wheels as we proceeded at little more than walking pace. We passed stone markers marking the beaten trail poking up through drifts and bracken and undergrowth, capped with white ice that partially covered the Rris numerals carved into them. We plodded over hills; through cuttings; through lightstriped tunnels of arching branches; over stone bridges across ice-encrusted streams. The cab was chilly, even with the heater. Periodically there'd be a rattle from the metal box as someone outside loaded in some more fuel.
     Those damned Guild papers kept Chihirae and I busy for the day. Rohinia leaned back, watching, studying, his winter coat almost blending into the overly-soft upholstery. He answered the odd question or clarified a point when required, but otherwise just watched us or stared out the window.
     In the late afternoon the weather cleared a little; a few patches of blue became visible as the sun westered and gradually sank into the grey haze of the horizon. For a time it was a molten disk glowering red and orange through the low cloud over distant hills, throwing a stripes of ruddy light through the dark cross-hatching of the trees.
     Then the sun was gone. The last of the light faded, slinking back into inky shadows that spilled and flowed together. In the dim cab a small kerosene lamp up behind the seat cast a wavering light, which was put to shame by the glow from my laptop. I slouched back in the deep upholstery and clattered away at the keyboard, transcribing the Mediator documentation. I was writing it in English, simply because there was no way to actually key Rris characters into the machine. The process of translating and rewriting the Mediator edicts meant I was actually thinking about the content. Just like cramming for finals; filling your head with marching ranks of disjointed facts.
     Chihirae was a warm weight leaning against my side, her head against my arm as she watched my fingers and the — to her — alien characters marching across the screen. She helped me with tricky sections I still didn't quite have a grasp on and in turn she learned a bit.
     Chihirae had a few words in English. When I'd first departed Westwater I'd left her with a crib sheet of English and Rris terms. Not a lot; I was a neophyte myself, so it was just a few first words I'd learned. She'd absorbed those and since then she'd picked up some more. We'd watched movies on the laptop and she'd asked questions; she'd read through notes I'd made and she'd asked questions. As she did then while she leaned against me and watched my hands and the text on the screen, matching it with the Rris text in the Mediator's terms.
     She wasn't stupid. None of the Rris around me were. Far from it. There were things I knew that they didn't, but that was mostly through education and exposure to more sources of information. I didn't have any illusions about being more intelligent than the locals. Most of those who'd been placed around me were probably considerably sharper than I was. Including the Mediators. Perhaps, especially the Mediators.
     Rohinia leaned back in his seat, chin on hand and watched us. Not necessarily watching the novelty of the laptop, but rather studying me — us. I could see him on the edge of my vision watching the Rris woman at my side as she was unselfconsciously familiar with me. How did he feel about that? I didn't know. He kept any reaction well hidden.
     And how did he feel about me teaching her English? I wasn't about to ask. But if anything happened to me, well, then Chihirae wouldn't be as indispensable as they'd been saying, would she?
     Out the coach window there was nothing but night and forest for hour after hour. A low crescent moon ducked in and out of the clouds. When it was out the fresh snow gleamed and the shadows under the trees were black as ink. And then there were other lights out there: faint glimmers of warmth. Buildings. Farmhouses.
     The town of Warmer Weather lay almost exactly a single day's journey outside Shattered Water on the Southern Road. Which was the entire reason for its existence; it was a common stopping point on the road; a place where people congregated; where local farmers and traders mingled.
     It was an older town; well established, but nothing like the capital. There were no walls, no fortifications or bailey or keep. It was simply a convenient where some roads met and locals sold and bought from the passing caravans. There were a few large streets, a few more smaller ones and the usual criss-crossing alleyways. Buildings were wooden clapboard and split shingles, fewer of brick or stone. Lights flickered dimly in windows. Smoke from chimneys lifted straight up into the still air, pale columns rising high over the town before diffusing into a mist.
     The inn we stopped at was on the outskirts of the town. It was a cluster of buildings around a stableyard. Some of the yard buildings were old whitewashed plaster-covered wattle and wooden frames; the single larger one a newer, two-story construction of brick and stone. Lights shone in all the windows and the sign over the door depicted a stylized bear gnawing away at what looked like a Rris arm. Troopers were already there, standing at the door and stalking around the shadows.
     They'd ridden ahead and bought the place out for the night, in the name of the king. All other guests had been turned away so we had the place to ourselves. I could see an individual who may have been the proprietor hanging around the front door, pacing back and forth over his footprints in the trampled snow. He was a short, plump Rris in a stained apron, looking anxious and flexing his fingers in a nervous way. When the coach stopped outside the door he drew himself up, getting ready to grease up to the visitors. A couple of the guards moved to block him, but they weren't required; when I emerged he jerked like someone had wired his tail to a wall socket, his ears went flat and he just stared as I stepped down and Chihirae landed lightly beside me. The door was open and something inside smelled good. I took her arm and led her past the transfixed Rris. "Evening," I said as we passed by.
     Chihirae elbowed me even as the voices behind us raised in argument.

Rris buildings tended to give me the feeling that they weren't actually real; that they were props in some peculiar movie. Some still do.
     Back home places like this would be marked by the use of centuries. Wood would be darkened and polished smooth and hard. There'd be pits in the flagstones where feet had worn the rock away. Metal would be rusted, dented or pitted. There'd be strata of soot in fireplaces and chimneys. There'd be a smell of age and time and people would move through and stare but not actually live there.
     The difference with Rris buildings was almost the opposite. They were old, but they were new. There were buildings still being constructed that would be considered places of historical interest back home. Rris lived and worked in places that'd have looked almost normal in an old European city, but they just didn't have that air of centuries of use about them. They weren't historical places, they were just buildings: homes, businesses, factories, whatever. In that inn the bricks were still sharp; the plaster white and clean; there was still sap leaking from some of the wooden beams. Lamps burned and there were fires in the kitchen and the air thick with the smells of soot and oil and wood and leather and food and Rris. Sometimes I felt like I was living in a museum.
     The innkeeper was upset. It took a while to calm him down. A combination of the facts that he was being well compensated and that a pair of mediators had had words with him made him more amenable, but not much more than that.
     In the big room downstairs there was a meal of hot stew and bread at the tables spread around the hearth. Guards were eating at tables toward the back; the others were at another closer toward the warmth. They waved me over and made a space between Chihirae and Rraerch. I stepped in, bumping against the hairy bodies as I settled and a bowl was shoved my way. With the combination of a fireplace full of glowing coals and the number of bodies the room was warm and reeked powerfully of mingled food and wet fur. Mediators were over the other side of the table, their backs to the wall as they ate and watched. Makepeace was off down the other end, looking away when I glanced her way. Chaeitch pushed in beside her, his own bowl in hand. He looked amused.
     "Ah, he's calmed down," he said. "You know, Mikah, staying around you is worth it just for the entertainment value."
     "Nobody told him?" I asked.
     "More trouble than it's worth," Rraerch offered around a mouthful of stew. "At first they don't believe. Then rumors start crawling around, curiosity seekers come, perhaps worse. A mess. Annoying." She swallowed, licked her chops with a pink tongue, and asked, "Your ride was satisfactory?"
     "A," I said, examining my own meal: undercooked meat and bread with gravel in it. "Comfortable. But another couple of weeks of that is going to get... tedious."
     "At least we'll get to know one another better," Chaeitch said.
     Laughter.
     "Speaking of which," I said, "Makepeace! Hey!"
     She looked up from her bread, looking startled, then her ears went back. "Ah... sir?"
     "I meant to ask: why are you with us? Why'd the University send you? I thought a lot of the more... the senior studiers there wanted to come."
     Chaeitch looked like he'd eaten a canary. Makepeace looked around imploringly, as if she wanted someone else to deal with this. "Hai, no," Rraerch flashed a teasing grin. "You tell him."
     The skinny younger female fidgeted, scratched at her neck. "Ah, sir. A, they did. A lot of them did. They all wanted to. So there was... we voted."
     "And they all vetoed one another!" Chaeitch interrupted, chittering with unbridled glee. "They all blocked one another!"
     "Then how did she..."
     "Some of her friends thought it would be amusing to enter her name amongst the applicants. She's so junior no-one was concerned about her. In the end she was the only one who hadn't been vetoed or otherwise blocked by opponents."
     Laugher chittered around the table, drawing glances from elsewhere in the room. Except for Makepeace — she looked embarrassed.
     "They accepted it?" I asked.
     "They'd already called for Guild adjudication of the draw!" Chaeitch provided, brandishing his spoon gleefully and sending a dollop of gravy off to some far corner of the room. "The Guild recorded it so they had to live with the results. They spat and screamed, but it was sealed and done."
     "Ridiculous coincidence really," Rraerch ruminated.
     "Seems to happen a lot when Mikah's involved, a?" Chaeitch said.
     "It's not that bad," Chihirae said.
     "A?" He aimed the spoon at her and lowered one ear. "Then your life has been absolutely normal since you met him?"
     She chewed, considering. Then she waved a hand in a conceding shrug. Laughter.
     Makepeace was still studying her food, looking uncertain.
     "Hai," I said to her. "You can relax. Nobody's laughing at you for anything."
     "A, sir," she said in a perfunctory sort of way. She didn't sound reassured. I had an idea why, but there'd be time for that later.
     We talked for a while about inconsequential things. The stew wasn't bad — cooked well enough if a little oversalted.
     But it certainly wasn't the Hilton; not even a Holiday Inn. The rooms upstairs weren't much to write about; they were clean and there was some basic furniture, but the one I was given wasn't big enough to swing a cat in. It was probably the best of the lot, with a rug on the floor, a small bed piled with blankets, a small table and cushion and a window that was just a couple of panes of cheap glass laced with doilies of frost. Several splinters of wood smoldered in a tiny grate, giving off enough heat to stop the chamberpot freezing. And that was all the plumbing there was; nowhere to wash or bathe that night. A few days of that and I'd be getting pretty ripe.
     Staff had brought my luggage up, so I had my sleeping bag which was going to be welcome in that chill. I popped my flashlight and stood it on the table in lamp mode. Easier than lighting a local lamp, and it was brighter, even if it was the same cool tint as the feeble moonlight that made it through the window. It was enough light for me as I unbuttoned the heavy coat and shrugged out of it one sleeve at a time and was interrupted by a quick scratch at the door.
     "It's me," a Rris voice said, then offered, "Chihirae."
     I threw the coat over my arm. When I cracked the door she pushed in, carrying small roll of leather. "I need some help," she said as she brushed by. "My pelt's in knots and I need some clever hands. Can I borrow yours?"
     "They're not doing anything at the moment,"
     "Good to hear," she said and smirked at me. "You get so embarrassed about that."
     "Oh, go cough up a hairball," I retorted as I hung the coat on a hook by the door. The cheap wood creaked, but it held.
     Chihirae's ears twitched. She cocked her head as she stared past me at the coat. "Ah Ties made that for you?" she asked and looked puzzled "Why? You have a tailor for that. And you have a good coat."
     "I needed a better one," I said, shrugged. "Warmer. My other one's not made for warmth. He offered."
     "Huhn," she said, glancing from me to the coat and back again. Cold enough that my breath hung in the air and she was only wearing breeches. I hoped she wasn't going to take it any further.
     Another quick huff and she seemed to dismiss the thought, turned to the bed and tossed the little leather kit to me. "It's better?" she asked.
     "He did a good job," I said as I unfastened the buckles on the bundle. By that time it was a familiar little package; the age-softened and worn leather that unrolled into an array of specialized tools nestled in their individual loops: a couple of brushes, combs, clippers and tweezers. They were silver and old. Heirlooms, or something of the sort. Chihirae'd said they'd belonged to her mother's mother, but not much more. Just about every Rris owned a little kit like that. They needed them — all that fur was high maintenance.
     And it wasn't something one could do properly by oneself. Chihirae sprawled on the bed, luxuriating while I raked combs of varying sizes through her matted winter coat. It took quite a while to brush all that out; quite a lot of work to look after. Human women worried enough about errant bits of body hair; that sort of all-over rug would give them conniptions. But on the other hand, in the depth of a winter snow storm she was quite comfortable while I froze my bare hide off, so I couldn't really say it was more trouble than it was worth.
     "You know that Makepeace," she said casually, laying with her head on crossed arms while I ran one of the coarser brushes through the matted fur on her back.
     "Oh, yeah. I met her a while back. At the University."
     "How?"
     Was that why she was there? Was this little grooming session an excuse to satisfy her curiosity? That question was loaded, I was pretty sure of that. There were... connotations there; not necessarily the human ones. If it were a human woman asking that sort of question I'd automatically be wary, assuming certain motives. With Chihirae... I knew her. I knew her well, but still associations were made in that feline skull that didn't connect the way I would expect. I hesitated, eyeing the question from various angles.
     "It's not a hard question, is it?" she asked, cracking an eye.
     "Not hard," I said, putting the coarse brush aside and picking one of the finer ones out of the kit. "I was just wondering why you were asking."
     "Just curious. She's awfully young to be from the University."
     "She's not senior there," I said. "Not much more than a student, I think. We only met a couple of times. When I first got here they wanted to look back through the university and library archives. To see if anyone... anything like myself had been reported before. She was one of the people they had sorting through all the old records."
     "Huhn. No success, I take it."
     "A lot of odd old stories from drunkards and lunatics. Nothing you could build a house on."
     "You're sure they're all stories?" she rumbled. "To hear what's happened to me coming from some other mouth, now I'd have called that a lunatic's tale."
     I shrugged again. "Nothing like me in any of them. They could almost all be traced to fires or lightning or just pranks, drunkenness or — as you said — madness."
     A hesitation. "I don't think you should stop hoping."
     "A," I said, pausing to clean loose fur out of the brush before resuming combing out her tawny-speckled coat. "But I'm not holding my breath for it."
     She made an acknowledging sound. "She seemed a bit concerned about something. And downstairs you seemed to want to say a bit more than you did. A problem?"
     "Ah, you know me too well." I grinned and shrugged. "No, no problem. Not for us. I just thought that after that... fiasco that got Makepeace assigned to us, her superiors probably weren't happy. She probably had all the senior personnel in the University very sternly telling her what to ask me about. Under those circumstances they might not have been very polite about it."
     "Uhrrr," she grumbled dozily. "Would explain why she's so worried."
     "A. A couple of dozen irritated scholars all with lists of questions they want her to ask me. She's wondering how to ask all those questions and who she'll anger if she does or doesn't."
     A snort of air. "You're going to tease her?"
     "What? Nah, I don't think so. I think she's got enough trouble," I said and then thought that through and frowned. There'd be a whole university of very self-absorbed and important scholars who'd been made to look like a bunch of muppets by someone who was essentially a mere undergrad.
     "Damn," I shook my head. "If she didn't have enemies before, she certainly does now."
     "You think she's in trouble?"
     "I don't know for sure. It's just... guessing."
     "It makes sense," she said, flicking her ears as I brushed them. "Perhaps you should have a talk with her about it."
     "Might be better if you do it," I said.
     "Hurh?"
     "I've got a case of the Mediators. There's always going to be one around me and that might make her a bit nervous."
     "You think she'd talk to me?"
     "Just work it into the conversation. Like you did trying to find out a bit more about her, a?"
     She chittered. "Ah, I thought I was being subtle."
     "Have to get up pretty early in the morning to get the better of me," I said, combing her flanks.
     "A," she said. "Obviously."
     "Very cunning, I am," I said.
     "Oh, of course," she said. "Doubtless. So there is no way someone could, for example, convince you to keep grooming their fur even though it doesn't really need it?"
     "Absolutely none."
     "That's good to hear," she said. "Higher. Ah, there."

We stepped out of the inn and right into icy mist.
     It was some ungodly early hour; still more night than day. First sunlight was trying to filter through an amorphous grey mist and overcast, reducing the early dawn to an anemic salmon glow in the distant east. It was still gloomy enough that the waiting coaches had their running lights burning, the feeble lamps just diffuse glows in the freezing mist. In the few steps from the inn's front door to the coach the mist condensed in my hair and beard, sending icy tendrils down into my collar. I didn't envy the drivers up on their boxes.
     I clambered into the coach to find Jenes'ahn already sitting there, waiting in the dim glow of the cab's lamps. I sat myself down, thankful that someone had already stoked the heater up. In fact, there hadn't been that much for me to do. I'd risen to a freezing room and our staff had brought hot water so I could at least perform a perfunctory wash. During my breakfast they'd packed my clothes and loaded the cases onto the wagons. All I'd had to do was collect my other gear and head out to the waiting rides.
     Voices outside made me glance out, but between the frost on the windows and the mist, it was a whiteout. All I could hear were Rris voices talking about something. A resolution was apparently reached because they cut off and then Rohinia appeared from the murk, clambering up into the coach.
     "You're riding with us today," he said. "We have things to discuss."
     Voices calling outside. A rattling of metal and equipment, and then the coach lurched into motion. The dark shape that was the inn receded into the lightening fog. I looked from one Mediator to the other. "Where's Chihirae?"
     "We suggested she might like to ride elsewhere today," Rohinia said.
     "Suggested," I said. "Right."
     Didn't want them to think I was too approving of the idea. If Chihirae'd played her cards right she'd be able to sit down with Makepeace for a while away from the Mediators. And that was one item sorted out a lot easier than I'd expected.
     I glanced out the window as we made our plodding way out into the fog. I could make out indistinct buildings out there in the murk, but between the fog outside and the frost on the glass there wasn't much more to see.
     "We were concerned about how you're dealing with what happened last night," Rohinia said.
     "Huh?" I responded brightly. "With what? What happened?"
     "The innkeeper. The staff."
     "What about them?"
     "You know what they were saying?"
     I hesitated. "I know he wasn't happy about having me there. Was there more to it?"
     I think the Mediators exchanged a look. "You didn't notice?"
     "That they were scared of me? That they didn't want to come anywhere near me? That our people had to tend to my room because they refused?" I asked and then shrugged. "Yes, I noticed. Hard not to."
     "It doesn't concern you?" Jenes'ahn asked. She seemed dubious.
     "Yes," I said, looking back at the window. The fog out there was lighter as the sun rose higher, but there still wasn't anything to see, just the shadows of trees in the mist. "But what can I do about it? Get angry? Threaten them?"
     "You aren't... upset?"
     I laughed, without a great deal of humor. That sort of thing was hard enough to ignore with the sheer number of times it happened. "I've had some years to get used to it."
     "And are you? Used to it?"
     "No. But then I'm still not entirely used to you either."
     Both pairs of ears twitched, not quite laying back. I felt my own facial muscles tighten in what wasn't quite a grin.
     "Are you being serious?" Jenes'ahn asked uncertainly. "A," I said in irritation. "What were you expecting me to do? Attack them? I'm not used to it. It does disturb me. Of course it does. But there's nothing I can do about it except live with it. Now, is that all this is about? Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?"
     Jenes'ahn tilted her head. "In regards to that? If you think that you can control yourself, then, yes, we're done there. But there were a couple of other things: How much do you know about Bluebetter?"
     "As much as I've been told. Some basic history; their important people; trade and industry and so forth."
     "Your teacher should give you a few more lessons," she said. "A bit of their history beyond the basics would be advisable. There's also the fact that you'll be a royal guest. You'll need more information about the Thes'ita, all of them. And there's also recommended [decorum] you should follow, which we recommend you use. We can teach you this, if you're willing."
     She knew my last encounter with the king of Bluebetter hadn't gone so well. Was she rubbing my nose in it?
     "If I'm willing?" I asked dubiously. "I get a choice?"
     "We're not going to waste our time if you're not willing," Jenes'ahn said bluntly.
     I crossed my arms, leaning back and meeting her amber stare. Her muzzle twitched, but Rohinia was motionless. Inscrutable. "At least you asked," I said. "If it's going to stop guards jumping on me, then it's probably a good idea."
     "You agree?"
     "A."
     "Very good. We will arrange something for you. The final item was the young lady from the University. You know her?"
     I blinked. "You don't? I thought you knew about everyone involved."
     A dismissive wave of the hand. "She was a last minute complication. The University was... confused. She was handed to us at the final moment. You know her?" "You heard last night," I said. "I only met her a couple of times. The Palace had her sorting through old University records."
     "What for exactly?"
     I'd have thought they'd have known. "For some sign of others like me; some mention in old reports and dispatches from towns that might've been ignored at the time. Anything strange. Maybe something that would have helped me get home." I shrugged. "You know how that worked out."
     "A," she said. "And she was just a student?"
     Sometimes their paranoia even surprised me. "Well," I recalled, rubbing my beard, "Let me think: she didn't have any money; she was used as cheap labor by her teachers; she hung around with other students and attended lectures..."
     "Don't be flippant," Jenes'ahn growled.
     "Come on! You think she could be a spy?"
     "It's not beyond possibility."
     "That's ridiculous. She's a student who got into something she's probably regretting. She's doubtless got people who could vouch for her. There'll be family, friends, associates, teachers..."
     "Just like your doctor, a?"
     That hit like a punch in the guts. I stuttered to a halt, feeling the blood in my face burning.
     "She was put in place years before you showed up," Jenes'ahn continued calmly. "She was an... opportunist; just waiting and dribbling information back to her handlers, waiting for a time when she could be used. One arrived and took advantage of it. It was done before, it can be done again."
     "The chances of that..."
     "Are small, but not non-existent."
     "She's not a goddamn spy!" I snapped.
     "You're sure of that?"
     I started to reply, then bit it back and glowered and said, "Not one hundred percent, no." She cocked her head the other way and I leaned forward. "In fact, she's probably been told by most of the faculty in the University to try and get as much information from me as she can. But she's not... she's not like... Mai."
     It was a name I hadn't said for a while.
     "She's a student. She's here because of chance; because of a joke and a bunch of backstabbing scholars whose little schemes turned around and bit them. And if she manipulated all that just to get into this position, then we might as just give her what she wants because she's a damn sight better than we are!"
     I dropped back into the seat, feeling my jaw twitching. My throat ached.
     The Mediators stared at me, and then Rohinia tipped a hand. "It's a valid point," he said.
     Jenes'ahn hissed like a kettle. Her nostrils flared. "Must you encourage him?"
     He flicked an ear and took a second to stroke down an errant tuft of fur on the back of a hand, "Mikah, we are trying to protect you. To blindly trust everyone who gets near to you is a mistake."
     "And to blindly distrust everyone is just... insane. If I treat everyone as an enemy, then eventually they will be," I retorted angrily and exhaled a frustrated white cloud. "I have enough trouble with peoples' trust, as you were so kind to point out."
     "You gave that trust carelessly once," Jenes'ahn said. "Look what happened."
     Perhaps she just liked to see me flinch when she brought that up.
     "Once bitten, twice shy," I retorted. "Makepeace... it's nothing like Mai. I hardly know her. I just don't think she's a risk. And why her? Why not one of the other fifty people with us?"
     "Because none of them joined us under such unusual circumstances," Rohinia answered placidly. "Things that are unusual deserve closer attention." He cocked his head and blinked slowly at me. "The more unusual, the more attention, as we have learned."
     "And what're you going to do about it? Torture her until she confesses?"
     "Hardly necessary," he sniffed. "We left word with the hall to investigate the proceedings at the University. They'll send word of their findings. If there's anything in her story that doesn't fit the fragments, we'll know."
     I just shook my head in disbelief. The coach rocked when I stood up.
     "What?" Jenes'ahn looked alarmed. "Where're you going?"
     "I'm going to walk for a while," I said, and then shoved the door open and dropped out of the coach before they could reply. I made sure I slammed it behind me.
     Getting out while moving wasn't a big deal. The whole procession was moving at no more than a brisk walking pace. I just dropped down onto snow already trampled by wheels and animals hooves, ignored the looks from guards and drivers , hunkered down into my coat and set off along the icy verge.
     Within a minute an elk padded up alongside with a snort of unsettled breath and rattle of equipment. I looked up at the guard commander astride it. "Is everything all right, sir?" he asked.
     "A," I said. "I just had my fill of stupid for the day and needed to stretch my legs."
     The officer looked confused, his ears going back. He twisted in the saddle to look back behind us, then said. "Huhn, yes, sir."
     I glanced over my shoulder: Jenes'ahn's coat briefly flapped open as she stepped from the running board, revealing a flash of bandolier and twin pistols for a moment before she landed and the long coat swung closed and she started stalking along behind me. I looked back up at the guard commander. "Like I said, I just need some fresh air."
     "Yes sir," he said in neutral tones and then reigned his steed around and trotted off back down the column.
     The fog lifted, the morning haze burning off to open a frozen sky and air that nipped at exposed skin. We'd left the outskirts of the town behind us while ahead the road was an icy white path between snow-smothered hedgerows and the bare sketches of trees. Early sun seeped through laced branches and icicles, the beams angling as the sun climbed. I paced the convoy, walking through frosted grass on the verge with ice crunching beneath my boots and in turn the Mediator paced me several meters back.
     I had a warm coat and the new boots were doing what they were supposed to and on top of that I was made for walking long distances. Rris aren't. So I ignored her and just walked and tried to calm down.
     Mediators. Judge, jury and executioners. Given the right circumstances they had authority over kings and countries, and I was such a circumstance. They were supposed to keep the peace, but how could you entrust such power to any institution? History was littered with the remains of organizations that'd obtained and abused such power. How could any such system remain viable? Let alone gain the acquiescence and compliance of governments, which by their very nature were violently arrogant constructs?
     And the Rris... respected the Mediators. From the mayors of small towns to merchants to farmers to the kings of their nations, they turned to the Guild. The Guild appeared in various forms throughout Rris history, from the oldest stories through to recent events. The Rris seemed to value the Guild — perhaps respect it — even as they feared it. I knew my Rris friends tolerated my jokes about the Guild, but they always did so nervously. Especially if there were Mediators around.
     It wasn't religion. It couldn't be. Rris didn't seem to work that way. But perhaps there was something else in their hardwiring. They were realists; pragmatists. They didn't subscribe to notions just because they liked the thought of it or because they were told they should, they took things with a grain of salt. They weren't gregarious, with social, hierarchical, alphadominated social groups; rather they evolved from something that'd probably been a solitary hunter. The cult of personality didn't seem to work on them.
     But then they followed Mediators. And they followed their royalty.
     When you thought about it, why did the Rris follow them? Both their royalty and the Guild were competent; they did their jobs, but surely there'd been corruption or insanity or sociopathic nutbars in there somewhere who'd put a spanner in the works. They can't have had a perfect record. Incidents I'd had with the Guild showed that they certainly weren't perfect; they had internal disputes and did make mistakes, and they'd go to extreme lengths to hide those mistakes.
     A lot of Guild power came through contracts and charters. If they didn't perform to these, they lost face and influence. That was why they tried to hide failure. But how did that apply to government? To their kings and queens? They didn't have such charters.
     Did they?
     King and Queens. They were English labels I'd applied because they were the closest fit to the only template I knew. I was starting to suspect it wasn't quite the right fit. Their true template was shaped by minds and lives that weren't human.
     I had time to think on those things as I walked. Rris left me alone. Civilization fell away behind us, the last of the outlying farms gone over a hill and the road and the winter woodlands stretching away ahead. The sun climbed, warming where it touched my skin even as it glared off snow and ice. There was time to think, time to cool down. Jenes'ahn dogged me for a while, looking increasingly tired, then angry, then determined and then frustrated before she finally gave up and switched with Rohinia.
     It was a small, petty victory, but I relished it.

Chihirae closed the rickety door behind her and leaned against the warped planks, blinking into the lamp light. Elsewhere, beyond the thin walls, I could still the bustle and clatter of pots and pans downstairs, the susurrus of Rris conversation.
     "They're still angry?" I asked as I poured some more hot water from the kettle into the chipped porcelain basin.
     She sighed, her breath quite visible in the gloom. "I'm not sure angry is the right word."
     "Oh?" I picked my wash cloth up again and soaked it. The water was already colder. "What then?"
     "I'm not sure. I think they're concerned? Confused?" She waved a shrug and her muzzle twitched, flashing an incisor. "People don't act like that. Not to Mediators."
     I grinned. "It'll be a learning experience for them," I said and splashed water over my face and chest, wiping with the wash cloth.
     Tailor's Trial was another small town, very much like the last. Like that one the main industry seemed to be as a local hub for trade. There were several inns catering to traffic travelling the road to and from Bluebetter. The one we lodged at was the largest, but that still meant it was less than a quarter the size of a small Holiday Inn. And it wasn't nearly as fancy. It was cold in that dark, pokey little room, the only light coming from my lamp. There wasn't a fireplace this time, just a bed and rickety table and shuttered window and a musty smell of many Rris imbued into the woodwork. There'd been a dinner in the main room downstairs, a big meal after a long day with only some salted meat. After the meal the others had talked, but I'd requested a kettle of water heated over the kitchen fire and then brought up to my room. It was freezing in there, but I'd stripped off and took the opportunity to wash the exertions of the day away.
     Chihirae watched as I wiped my neck and chest. "You walked all day?"
     "Most of it," I said, wringing the cloth out.
     "Oh, rot," she chittered. "No wonder you smell like that. And no wonder they're irritated. I don't think that's something most people would do. Do you need some assistance there?"
     "I can manage."
     "Not your back you can't," she snorted. "Here..."
     She took the cloth from me. She knew how, wiping so she didn't rub against the crosshatching welts of old scar tissue across my shoulders and down my flanks. The skin was numb, but I felt the sensation of pressure and movement. Warm water turned to icy trickles down my legs. I shuddered.
     "Cold," came the voice from behind me. "You shouldn't be doing this in winter..."
     "It's not..." I began and didn't want to finish the sentence; didn't want her so close to my weakness. "Let me do that. I can do that." I turned to take the cloth back.
     Chihirae didn't let go, and for a second we stood there, each holding an end of the soggy cloth. She stared up at my face, hunting for something. I don't know what she found, but she ducked her head and surrendered the washcloth before retreating to the narrow bed, sitting on the extra blankets and eiderdowns there and hugging her legs to her chest, wrapping her tail around and watching me over her knees. I finished what I'd started; dipping the cloth, wringing it out, scrubbing my arms and legs and points in between, dripping on the floor while the last of the heat seeped out of the water. Noises came through the thin walls: noises from downstairs, footsteps on the stairs outside, Rris voices in the rooms around us.
     "You're angry about something?" Chihirae asked eventually.
     "What? No. No, it's not that."
     "What then?"
     I bit my lip, squeezing the cloth out again. Water trickled into the basin.
     "Mikah?"
     "Why do you treat them like that?" I asked.
     "Who?" She cocked her head. "What do you mean?"
     "The Guild. The Mediators. The way you, the way you all act..." I waved my hand aimlessly, groping for words. "They're a Guild. They're a... a business, not a nation, but they seem to do anything they wish. They order kings around and everyone just accepts it."
     She blinked, then scratched at her muzzle as she considered. "Huhnn, that's just what you do, a?
     "I'm not an expert on Guild affairs, but Mediators have always been around. Your lessons should have told you that. They can claim authority in extreme or unusual circumstances. That's why they were brought in when you first arrived — because nobody could figure out what else to do with you, but otherwise they stay out of the affairs of usual people."
     "But governments, Chihirae?"
     "How else are you going to ensure they respect their positions? Without some sort of [something], they would simply be another organization without restraints."
     "But if they wanted to, can't the governments simply overrule the Guild? Disband them? Declare them outlaw?"
     She looked surprised and reseated herself, folding her legs tailor-style and sitting up straighter. "What are you talking about? They can't do that."
     "Why not?"
     "Mikah," she said slowly, explaining the obvious to a child, "the Guild makes the monarchies. Without the Guild, they wouldn't exist."
     I stopped. "What?"
     She snorted, "Where do you think kings and queens come from?"
     "Their parents? They... inherit, is that the word? They inherit the titles?"
     A chitter. "Rot, Mikah. No, no. To rule because your parents did? What sort of way is that to run a country? No, there are candidates and the Guild decide who is to rule."
     The water was growing cold. "The... Guild? But... how can you decide they're capable of saying who's best? What gives them the authority?"
     A sigh. "And your way, to have a thousand farmers say who is best to run the country when their entire experience revolves around stock, fields and soil is better? They would simply choose a buffoon who promises more cattle. The Guild... making decisions like that is what they do. They have centuries of experience doing that."
     "But it's a job. How can you say a certain person is better at something just because it's their job. They might still be very bad at it."
     Her eyes flashed as the blinked. "Mikah, they're Mediators. They... it's not just a job. It's what they are. What do you think the word means? They are called that for a reason."
     I squeezed the washcloth out. The last of the warmth was gone from the water and I was shivering in the frigid air. "I don't understand. The words... they don't make sense to me."
     There was a low hiss in the dimness. "One of those moments, a?"
     "A."
     "Perhaps... you could ask them about it, a?"
     I winced. "Chihirae..."
     She clapped her hands together, interrupting me. "Please, hear me out. They could tell you more. Ask them about their lives; Ask Jenes'ahn about her upbringing in the Guild. It might give you some understanding. It might help." A flash of teeth in a grin that was a manic copy of one of my smiles. "I'm asking you to ask. Be understanding. Can you do that?"
     I rubbed the cold cloth up and down my leg a few times before I sighed and nodded. "Okay, okay,"
     "That's a 'yes', isn't it."
     "A. It's a yes."
     "Thank you," she said and watched as I finished my ablutions. "You're sure you are all right? You are looking cold."
     "Some heating would have been nice."
     "You could have washed by the fire downstairs."
     "The last thing I wanted was an audience."
     A chitter. "No? But I'm sure they'd all find it most entertaining."
     "Dinner and a show, a?"
     "You could have charged admission, a?"
     I dropped the washcloth back into the bowl. The water was stone cold. By the morning it'd probably have a film of ice over it. A threadbare rag worked as a basic towel and I briskly rubbed myself down, drying off and trying to restore some circulation. The rag was soaked before I was dry and presently I was standing on wet floorboards, damp and shivering. When I turned to the bed, Chihirae was stretched out on the blankets, blinking lazily up at me.
     "I didn't know this place offered bed-warming services," I said.
     "Oh, that's extra," she chittered and rolled aside, lifting the edge of the sheets. "Come on, get in," she urged. "You're going to grow icicles standing there."
     I hesitated for a chilly second. "A strange lady in a place like this? How do I know you don't have fleas?"
     She hissed and rumpled her muzzle; bared teeth, "You can check for yourself."
     I slipped under the covers and then winced as she slid in beside me. Her body thrummed with a pulse that was faster than mine and beneath her fur her body almost burned with an inhuman heat. I caught my breath.
     "Rot," she also hissed as my feet touched her. "You're freezing. And soggy. Here." She pulled me closer. Her hands rubbed at me.
     "Hey, that tickles."
     "You're like an lump of ice. At least you smell better. I hope you're not going to make that a daily occurrence."
     "It'd depend on the company, I think," I said, ruffling her fur, scratching her back in a certain way.
     "Huhnn," she growled and her hands moved as well, rubbing across my chest and belly. "It wasn't dull?"
     "Gave me some time to think."
     "A? Did you learn something today?"
     "Oh, yes," I said.
     "Tell me."
     "Well, your nipples get hard in the same order every time," I observed, tweaking the leathery nubs buried in the fur down her front, "First this one, then this one, then this one and this..."
     "Rot you," she chittered, rubbing some more. We squirmed under the sheets; wriggled and rolled, trying to make accommodations on the narrow bed without exposing too much bare flesh to the nip of the cold. Those nips came from elsewhere and I flinched back from a playful one, yelped as I was bitten by slivers of frigid air and flinched back again. She laughed and pulled me closer, the bed creaking as we shifted, tangling legs as we embraced. The little lamp cast electric shadows in the tiny room as we moved under the sheets, a pair of voices in the darkness:
     "Your belt is... ah, there."
     "You want to get on top?"
     "You're sure? Ow! Claws."
     "Oh, rot. Get your leg over here... huhn, you're heavy. Careful."
     "Damn, careful with the sheets. It's cold."
     A chitter. "I think this bed is a little small."
     "Then... like this?"
     "That's..." Chitter. "I don't think this is working."
     "How about..."
     "Huhn! Careful... Oh. A. Yes."
     "That's better?"
     "Huhn, a. That's nice. That's very nice. That's all right for you?"
     "Yes. Uhn. A. Very."
     "Oh, then I might let you do some more."
     "Really? You're too kind."
     "I know. Rot, further... Hai, a bit further in... no back, no... a, there. Right there... Huhn! Rot, that's good. More... there! Faster."
     When I realized something had changed; was wrong; was missing, I froze. Chihirae kept the motions going for a few seconds, then noticed my inactivity and made a quizzical little noise. "You stopped?"
     That was the only sound.
     "Uh, Chihirae," I asked the silence. "Um, can they hear us?"
     And from the other side of the thin lath and plaster walls around us a number of voices chorused, "Yes!"

"I will get you for that," I growled as I trudged through the snow, following the rows of tracks in the fresh snow behind the coach.
     Chaeitch had perched himself on the few centimeters of tailgate available on the coach in front of me, legs dangling and leaning back against the oilskins covering the luggage. It was an icy morning again, but he was just wearing a green kilt and grey quilted vest around the edges of which his winter pelt fluffed out. He used his fingers to force the corners of his mouth up, baring teeth in a mock smile. "I did apologize, but again; you were the ones telling the story. We were just the audience. You can't blame us for just hearing."
     "Just you wait," I promised. "You think you're safe, but when you least expect it, then I'll pounce."
     He grinned again. "Ah, but I think your rage pales into insignificance beside the teacher's."
     I gritted my teeth and exhaled a steaming cloud through my nose.
     "What were you trying to do anyway? We were placing bets."
     "Hope you lost."
     He grinned again. "Huhn, I'll put it this way — I can certainly afford to buy you a drink, a?"
     "It'd better be a damn good one," I grumbled.
     "Long Way's a decent-sized town and it does have some good taverns. We can probably find something to your taste." He cocked his head and gestured at me. "Still a couple of days off, though. You're planning on walking all the way there?"
     "I just wanted some exercise." Truth was, I was still pissed about the previous night. It'd been embarrassing for me. Extremely so. Chihirae had been first amused and then disappointed when she realized just what effect that had.
     "I guess that answers my question," she'd said in a resigned voice as we'd laid close together, sharing warmth and listening to the partially-muffled sounds of distant laughter and conversation. "We'll have to find somewhere quiet, a?"
     Somewhere quiet while staff, a few dozen soldiers and a couple of overly-possessive Mediators were all trying to keep tabs on me. Yeah, right.
     Chaeitch was sitting relaxed on the narrow tailgate, legs and tail dangling, rocking with the swaying motion of the coach and watching me as I trudged along behind. He might've been able to read something in my body language, enough to know something wasn't quite right, but not exactly what. He got it wrong. "It's not so bad," he said. "It's only a couple of days."
     I sighed and shook my head. To him the fact that Chihirae and I were having sex wasn't really a problem. It was interesting, but to him my reaction to their awareness of what was going on was far more amusing. By their lights I was over-reacting, but I didn't see the world by their lights. The best thing to do was ignore their teasing, but that could be easier said.
     "Something I'd been thinking about," he said, cocking his head. "Your rail road, why do the cars need the rails? Why not steam carriages on wheels on usual roads?"
     Because... I started to say something, then frowned and closed my mouth.
     "I was thinking that with the earlier engines the rails would have been necessary," he continued. "They barely had the power to move themselves, let alone cargo, but some of the new designs we're working on... they could be efficient enough to drive a coach, like this. Put cargo on it and it'd be faster than this and without the need for thousands of kilometers of steel."
     Road trains? Steam lorries? I considered. "It's an idea," I said eventually. "Would it be practical? You'd still need a good road — better than this — and hundreds of kilometers of it. Easier than steel rails, a, granted. But each vehicle wouldn't able to move nearly as much as a steam engine on rails. And for each smaller load you'd need an entirely different steam coach to move it. And each one of those engines would require a lot of fuel and water. Over a long distance, they would be less efficient. Also, our engines aren't so small at the moment. In fact, they're huge. Hit a soft spot and they would sink into the ground under their own weight."
     He stroked a claw through his cheek ruff a few times "But your kind use them? Road coaches?"
     "We used to," I said. "Goods were moved by rail a lot, then the roads and road vehicles and their fuel became cheap and easily available and they became the preferred method. Now we are shifting back to rail."
     "Why?"
     "A lot of reasons. Efficiency for one. Also, another was it turned out the fuel being burned was... not good. Poison for the land and people. Especially when everyone decided they had to have such a vehicle. Roads full of those self-moving wagons put out so much smoke the air was poison."
     "No-one noticed?"
     "No-one cared. It was easy and convenient and certain people were making too much money. It was only when the damage started costing more than the benefits that they started changing."
     "And you wonder why we don't want this knowledge spread," said the voice at my shoulder.
     "Morning, sunshine," I sighed, rolled my eyes and looked around at the Mediator who'd come up around the side of the team drawing the coach behind us. She cocked her head back at me, hands thrust down into the pockets of her long road coat. "Just as well you turned up," I said. "I was about to tell him about a device that lets you see through solid walls."
     "If you're referring to a window, we already have those," Jenes'ahn returned coldly.
     Chaeitch chittered.
     "Ah!" I rolled my eyes. "You're no fun."
     "What was that noise?"
     Where've you been anyway?"
     "Having a talk with her ladyship."
     "A? She's also got information you're trying to control?"
     "Apparently," she said levelly. "Very interesting. Do you really lick her genitals during sex?"
     I stumbled, felt the heat flush my face and neck. "Only if she asks politely, a?" Chaeitch smirked.
     "You're not helping," I aimed an accusing finger at him. "That'll be two drinks. And you," I swung to Jenes'ahn. "What business is it of yours anyway?"
     She tipped her hand back and forth in a shrug. "There're still enough questions about you to answer. She can help us with those."
     Had I been wrong in inviting her along? No. Wait a second. It hadn't been my idea. They... Had I been manipulated into bringing her?
     "She doesn't have to answer your questions."
     "No, but she's doing it."
     I grimaced. Chaeitch twitched up a little straighter in alarm and hopped off the coach. "Hai, now, Mikah," he said in placating tones as he put himself between me and the Mediator.
     "I'm annoyed," I told him. "Not that angry."
     "Huh," he coughed, brushed at his tunic and looked from me to Jenes'ahn. "Better this mistake, I think."
     "You think he would attack me?" Jenes'ahn asked him.
     "I think he's very protective of her ladyship," Chaeitch said, which didn't entirely answer her question.
     Jenes'ahn seemed to weigh that, then said, "Mikah, you should know that she approached us. She had some things she wanted to discuss."
     A pause. She was probably waiting for me to ask her what, but that was Chihirae's business. I just nodded, "A."
     "And she said you wanted to talk with us."
     She wanted... oh. "A," I sighed.
     "You want to talk here?" Jenes'ahn asked, twitching an ear. I looked at her, around at the team of elk drawing the following coach. Mad cervine eyes rolled back at me. Beyond the animals, the Rris up on the driver's bench were doing their best to appear uninterested; other mounted guards plodded alongside the column far enough away that I thought they'd be out of earshot. Well, mine anyway.
     "Let's take it inside," I said.
     "Mikah?" Chaeitch ventured. "You're going to be... sensible?"
     "Yeah," I nodded to him and said, "Thanks. I got this."
     He looked relieved, but still a little uncertain.
     After the cold morning air the heated cab of the coach was almost oppressively warm. The driver hadn't slowed down at all as we boarded; I just pulled the door open and stepped up on the running board, the coach rocking on its springs as I hopped up. It wasn't moving fast but those big, narrow, iron-bound wheels would leave a lasting impression if they ran over you. I dropped into the overstuffed seat facing the current occupant, Rohinia, as Jenes'ahn ducked in behind me, letting the door swing shut behind her as she settled herself. Ice and snow from my boots and the Rris' furry feet melted and dripped onto the carpet.
     "He's going to talk," Jenes'ahn said. Rohinia just tipped his head, looking politely interested.
     "Chihirae thought I should," I said.
     "She thinks you're worried," Rohinia said levelly and steepled his fingers, claws ticking together. "About anything specifically?"
     "Is there something I'm not being told?"
     "Such as?"
     I bit back a smart-ass retort. Was he being deliberately obtuse? Was it simply returning what I'd given them? Or was he actually fishing to find out what I knew? "Something that might involve Chihirae or myself. Hirht was reluctant to let me out of his sight, then suddenly I'm bundled off to Bluebetter. And he sends her along, making it look like it was my idea."
     "Huhn," he snorted. "Noticed that, did you?"
     "And the way you're having me ride in a different coach each day? To ride with different people? It'd also make it harder for people to know which coach I'm in, wouldn't it?"
     His expression didn't change. Not an iota. He just watched me with level, interested amber eyes. "A. It would. But that wasn't our intention."
     "Then I'm being concerned about nothing?"
     He hesitated. Just long enough.
     "Thought so," I grunted. Just 'cause you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
     "No," said Rohinia. "We aren't entirely sure ourselves. You were told other kingdoms were making demands to see you. We know Hirht is balancing these demands on other countries standing with Land of Water."
     "Friends first," I observed.
     "Not necessarily."
     "Bluebetter is an ally, a?"
     "At the present time, yes. But, there have been disagreements between the countries in the past and there are still issues that cause some baring of teeth. Hirht probably feels that his allies are stable so it's better to try and prop up the area that might falter, and sending you to them first should go a great way toward smoothing relations between the countries."
     "But you think there's risk?"
     "Probably not from Bluebetter. There are other countries who have worse relations with Land of Water. If they get angry, they might decide that if they can't get what they want, then nobody will have it."
     I grimaced. "That would... make a lot of other countries quite angry, I should imagine."
     "A. And if the culprit was uncertain, there'd also be a question of who they would be angry with. Chances are they would blame Land of Water for the loss."
     And that would... oh, shit.
     "Are there... does anyone have any real problems with Land of Water?"
     Rohinia flashed a grin, and there wasn't anything pleasant about it. "There are many kinds of 'problems', Mikah. There are those who have 'problems' with Land of Water policies. There are various entities who see their interests threatened; and there are others who simply see a way to profit from the situation."
     "Are you just... talking ideas? Or do you know something?"
     Jenes'ahn glanced at her partner. "There's nothing you can bite," he said. "But there are... activities that aren't usual. Movement in some guilds; money changing hands; talk in certain circles. Just scents in the air, but the Guild is experienced in this sort of thing."
     "And what are you doing about it?"
     He waved at the carriage. "All we can. At this point nothing has actually happened, so there is nothing for the Guild to act on."
     "I thought you had control over the monarchies."
     He cocked his head. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
     "They seem to do whatever you tell them."
     A snort. "Within limits of the charter. And they certainly know what those limits are. If they aren't violating the conventions, then we can't act."
     I'd heard that before. "She said you make the monarchies. I don't know what that means. If you make them, shouldn't you have control?"
     "Then we'd be the governments," he said, tapping the pads at the tips of his fingers together. Then he cocked his head. "This is really new to you?"
     I shrugged. "People still say things that are very odd to me and act like they're the most normal things in the world. I think this is one of them."
     "But you know of the selection?"
     I hesitated. "I've heard the term. I thought it was like... like our way."
     "Ah, yes," Rohinia said neutrally. I knew what their opinion of democracy was — they viewed it as something of a 'vote yourself rich' scheme. How could you trust the ignorant masses to make sound political choices? If you wanted ironmongery you'd go to a blacksmith; if you want impartial judgment you'd use the Guild. Simple as that.
     Not entirely accurate, I felt: They weren't accounting for the fact that the US democratic system had — on average — citizens who were better educated than most Rris. Well, perhaps except for Fox News adherents. But then I'd always assumed that Rris royalty were like, well, traditional royalty; with bloodlines and inherited titles. I hadn't considered a constitutional monarchy.
     But that wasn't quite right either.
     "I was present at Hirht's choosing," Rohinia said. "You know that?"
     "Oddly enough, that never came up in casual conversation."
     He gave me a hard look, then continued. "It's not complicated: various patrons put forth candidates: highborns, merchants, and the existing monarchy, of course. The Guild spends considerable time watching and evaluating those candidates, and in time they are tested. From that the Guild chooses a successor."
     "You just ask them some questions to choose a new king?" I asked, dubiously.
     He scratched at his tufted chin. "A little more than just questions. The criteria of the tests are quite... convoluted. We don't just want ability: there've been many who showed plenty of that who'd be disastrous in any position of power."
     I didn't know exactly how to take that. "Your Guild chooses the people who end up running the countries? Isn't that a bit of a conflict of interests? How can you choose impartially?"
     "We don't," he said. "We're looking for those who are best able to rule."
     "The ones you can control the best," I observed.
     Wrinkles creased the bridge of his muzzle. "Those are certainly not necessarily the best choices."
     I shook my head, trying to grasp the logic of it. "So, a guild or wealthy individual can just rock up to you and present you with an employee or lackey and say 'Hey, I think it'd be great if this individual ran the country'. And you just give them a test?"
     "Mikah, the testing lasts for ten years. Candidates cannot be older than eight."
     I added that up. "You mean children?"
     "A. Candidates who show the most promise are chosen. Their patrons train and tutor them in the skills they will need. The Guild watches and evaluates, not just their knowledge, but their personalities, their strengths and weaknesses; their hates and fears. Eventually, they choose. What is in the Guild's best interest is to choose well. The good rulers cause fewer problems than the poor."
     "But I've seen lineage. Hirht and the Lady, they have pictures of predecessors..."
     "Good rulers tend to produce good offspring. They have the ability, the experience and the resources to prepare them well. It's not uncommon for dynasties to rule for generations."
     "It sound... disruptive."
     "As opposed to changing governments every few years simply because it's mandated?" he snorted. "No sooner has one policy started to take effect than the replacement government disbands it simply because it belonged to their opposition and must therefore be wrong. That sounds absurd to me."
     "I don't see how an organization can make a... a balanced choice," I said.
     He regarded me, as if trying to decide how to reply to that. It was Jenes'ahn who said, "Mikah, how do you think we came to the Guild?"
     "Position vacant advertisement in the local news sheet?" I ventured.
     Jenes'ahn hissed, exasperation or disgust. Rohinia just seemed to weigh the statement from various angles and then tipped his hand over. "No," he said and paused for a second. Gathering thoughts or just wondering what to say?
     He surprised me. "Most of us were left with the crèche," he said. "We were found, given, lost or discarded. The Guild raised us. We were taught and watched and tested and apprenticed. Then, eventually, some of us were taken into the Guild. We became Mediators. It's all we do; it's all we are.
     "You query our motives? Our motives are to do the best for the Guild. It is our home, our hearth. What we do — what you consider meddling — is the best we can do. We try to keep peace; to keep balance; to keep vigilant. Our successes are the Guild's, as are our failures.
     "We try not to fail," he said. Then leaned back in his seat, crossed his hands across his belly and snorted. "It diminishes us and just makes more work. We do everything we can to ensure what we do is the right choice."
     I chewed on that for a bit. "You?" I asked Jenes'ahn. "How did you join?"
     "A [something]," she said, and elaborated. "Left with the Guild. Taken in."
     "You're thinking we could be bought," Rohinia said. "You're thinking Mediators would make decisions against the Guild."
     "It's happened before," I said. "You might remember."
     "No," he retorted. "It hasn't. What happened... All the decisions made then... all the actions taken were for the good of the Guild. Whatever the ending of the play, the Guild would have continued."
     I grimaced and felt an atavistic shiver crawl up my spine. They'd set the playing field and placed me in the middle of it to be either killed by the good guys or used by the bad, and the kicker was that both sides were on the same team. The only other option I'd had was... it was what I'd done. As Shyia had known I would.
     "And what could anyone offer a Mediator that the Guild can't?" he asked. "Power? Wealth?"
     "A Mediator craves not these things?" I offered sarcastically.
     It meant nothing to him. "Precisely," he said. "If a Mediator damaged Guild reputation, he'd simply be damaging the very thing that gives him authority. Why would he do that?"
     "To remove the Guild?" I suggested offhand.
     It got more of a reaction than I'd thought. Both the Mediators twitched, actually visibly flinched, then stared at me with eyes that had gone black. "Why would you say that?" Rohinia asked.
     I shrugged, but truth be told, I wasn't sure. It'd been a reflexive answer and I had to stop and wonder where it'd come from. "It seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? If someone had some problems with the Guild, or wanted to get rid of it, then the best way would be to undermine the charter, wouldn't it?"
     The Mediators both stared at me. Jenes'ahn laid her head to the side, looking at me like a cat might regard a particularly bold rodent. "That's not exactly a new thought," Rohinia said slowly, as if confessing something. "It has been tried before, more than a few times."
     I had to ask: "What happened?"
     "The Guild has always expressed its displeasure with those responsible."
     I'll bet. Examples and all that. "Who tried it?"
     "Last time, I believe, it was a [something] of lords from the central countries. Believed they could open the river trades if the Guild wasn't involved. They are no longer an issue."
     The sound of the coach wheels changed. Rivulets of frozen water on the window made the view ripple and distort, but I could see the coach was passing over a small bridge. The stream below was a trickle through slushy snow and frost. I nodded. "What happened to them?"
     "The conspirators were executed. Their assets were dissolved and integrated into the government's holdings."
     "The Guild didn't take anything?"
     "The Guild has what it needs. If it requires more, it [something] it."
     "Oh," I said. There were a few words in that exchange that I hadn't understood. I thought I understood enough to fill in the blanks. "What if the people of a country don't approve of the ruler you have chosen? What if they choose to follow another?"
     "If that other had a sound enough reason he could bring his case before the Guild. But if that did happen, it'd mean there was a chance the Guild failed in its duty in selection in the first place. This has never happened."
     But what if... I started, then stopped. The Rris didn't succumb to cult of personality. They weren't pack or herd creatures that latched onto an alpha figure to follow. They didn't follow someone just because they had an expensive suit, great smile or commanding speaking voice. Rather, they followed results. A Custer or Patton, a Hitler or Joan of Arc — someone who relied on overbearing presence of personality rather than actual ability — would have had a very difficult time here.
     "So, it's a... a balance?" I ventured. "Your Guild has influence over governments, but only in certain situations. And the governments can't go against the Guild because the Guild... well, the Guild is their... sponsor?"
     "In very simple terms, yes." Rohinia watched me thinking that over and said, "You don't approve."
     I shook my head and looked out the window again, through frosting condensation at the winter world. "I don't understand how it can work. There just seems to be too much scope for... things to go wrong."
     "You're referring to corruption," Jenes'ahn provided.
     "How do you prevent that? You can't seriously say you police yourselves?"
     "We don't have to," Rohinia said. "There're more than enough eyes watching us, and so many of them would like to see us fall. We follow the laws."
     Yeah. They did. They knew every scrap of those laws; every little loop and hole in those laws. And I thought they'd have to: any human organization such as a government or corporation would have been spending ludicrous amounts of effort finding ways to protect themselves from an institution like the Mediators Guild, and any way of discrediting them would be a major weapon. I wondered if any of those observers did more than just watch.
     "If — for argument's sake — the Guild was found to be breaching the treaty, what would the repercussions be? How could they punish you?"
     His pupils dilated and Jenes'ahn shifted slightly.
     "I'm not dragging up the past," I clarified. "I'm just asking."
     Rohinia gestured acknowledgement. "Depending on the severity, there could be anything from fines or forfeiting of policies, perhaps loss of authority in areas through to much more drastic actions. If enough nations had a strong enough reason and evidence, they could choose to dissolve the charter in part or in entirety."
     "What would you do?"
     "Again, that would depend upon circumstances. There would certainly be appeal; calls for arbitration and investigation."
     "And if you found it unjust or you disagreed with the ruling, you would fight?"
     He snorted. "The Guild strength is in its unity. We're scattered throughout the world with halls in every country. Not many in each place, but overall quite a few. When it's necessary, the Guild can muster, and when it does so it is a powerful force. Any country would think seriously before crossing us."
     "The Swampy River wars," I said, recalling a lesson I'd been given.
     "A. That was the first time a nation openly challenged Guild authority and the Guild demonstrated its capabilities," he said and frowned, ears twitching back.
     "Mediators have been around for a long time, Mikah. Many hundreds of years. Probably thousands. Certainly since before records began. Before the Guilds were formally recognized or even the current countries existed. They used to be [something] travelling between settlements. Initially they were considered [something]; stock from outside the settlements. And as they weren't associated with anyone they came to be counted on for their impartiality and fairness for business and judgement. They... solved problems. Of various sorts.
     "An organization did form. Slowly. Over hundreds of years. Not recognized fully until Swampy River. We garnered considerable influence from that and some other instances. Eventually the Reichis Charter was ratified ."
     Some hundreds of years later, I recalled. The Guild had History, with the capital H. Something else I remembered, something a Queen had told me, that night when I'd been hiding in her chambers, the Guild gained more power during times of unrest.
     "And that Charter gives you authority in exchange for maintaining the peace," I said.
     "For maintaining the agreement," Rohinia corrected, a twist of semantics. "But that is the meat of it, a."
     The greater the unrest, the more authority.
     I just nodded. "And how are things now?"
     "With countries squabbling about you like cubs over the last of the liver? Things could be better. You have our protection, so nobody is doing anything foolish, but it only takes a single greedy fool to steal stones from the wall."
     It sounded better in Rris, but I got the gist of it.
     "That's why you're here," he said. "There's nothing to concern you. We can keep the fools from trying acts like that by offering them access and show them that if they're cooperative and behave themselves, then there's a chance they'll get preferential treatment."
     "A chance," I noted.
     "A," he said noncommittally.
     "And chances like that happen often?"
     "They can," he said and his muzzle creased slightly. "And the hope of that chance can dam up a lot of troublesome river."
     "Yeah," I nodded. "But if and when that dam breaks, you're got real trouble."

The brass latch was freezing against the skin of my fingertips as I pulled the coach door open. Chihirae and Makepeace both turned to watch me, looking like they'd been cut off in the middle of conversation. "Sorry to disturb you," I said as I clambered in. "Don't mind me. Just act like I'm not here."
     Chihirae leaned back, give me a lazy, slit-eyed look and chittered. "You'll just blend in, a?"
     "Just like I always do," I said as I settled myself into the overstuffed seat beside her. The cab was warm and after a couple of days already smelled of damp Rris in close confines. After a few weeks it was going to develop real personality.
     Makepeace was sitting opposite, openly staring at me. I smiled. "How are you doing?"
     Her ears went back, then up and then back again: their version of a nervous swallow. "Fine, sir."
     "An interesting talk," Chihirae said and Makepeace's ears went flat.
     I leaned forward and I think she stopped breathing. "A talk about the questions you're supposed to ask me?" I asked gently.
     "Yes, sir," she said. Chihirae tipped her head quizzically as she watched me, probably wondering what I was going to do.
     The door opened again, admitting a blast of chill air and a Mediator. Jenes'ahn hopped up into the cab, pulled the door closed and opened her coat, spreading it out as she settled herself in the remaining seat beside Makepeace.
     "And you had your talk with them?" Chihirae asked me.
     "A," I said and looked at the Mediator who returned my gaze with a frank stare. I grimaced. "It's... I guess it works for you, but it's... not the way I would think."
     "But you understand now?"
     I shrugged. "Some of it. The how it works, but not necessarily the why. They gave me some history and other things I didn't know. It answered some questions; opened others," I said quietly, looked down at my hands as I rubbed them to get some warmth back into them and shrugged again. "Anyway... Makepeace, I apologize if I am interpreting this incorrectly, but you haven't seemed to be very happy. You have a problem?"
     Her eyes flicked to Chihirae, who sighed and said, "Don't worry. He's not angry. You can tell him."
     Makepeace didn't look convinced. "Yes, ma'am," she said uncertainly and took a breath, her ears twitching again. "I said the truth about what happened. It was a joke, that was all. We never thought one of us would be voted, but once it happened... it was terrible: all the masters, they all came to me and they all wanted private meetings... they all said what a good job I was doing and that I would be representing the University and if I didn't ask you these questions and get your response they would see that I would be turned out of the University without accreditation or recommendation!"
     With the run-on outburst done she subsided, hunching down in her seat and looking miserable and worried.
     "Huhn," Chihirae nudged me. "Problems, a?"
     "Oh, yeah," I said, nodding. It was almost funny. "Problems." I leaned forward. "Makepeace, don't worry about it."
     "Sir?" she didn't look convinced.
     "I can answer some of the questions you have. Probably not all of them, but certainly some of them. If your seniors have a problem with it... Hell, I'll let them know that I'll get annoyed with anyone who has a problem with that."
     "Mikah," Jenes'ahn spoke up, "Why? It's not your concern."
     "She helped me out often enough in the archives. And I don't like see big organizations picking on people," I said. The Rris blinked at me and I smiled sweetly. "It's a character flaw."
     The Mediator snorted. The teacher made an amused noise. The student was looking a little confused.
     "Is this okay with you?" I asked her.
     "I... Sir... can you do that?" she said uncertainly.
     "I believe so," I said. "Why, yes. Yes I can."
     "It's his sense of humor," Chihirae explained. "It's an acquired taste."
     "Oh," Makepeace said, and then chittered uncertainly, as if she were testing the waters.
     "Rot," Jenes'ahn sighed. "Don't encourage him. And you're aware that any questions you ask will have to be screened by either myself or Rohinia? We'll decide whether or not he'll give you an answer."
     "Understood, Ma'am," Makepeace said meekly.
     "You understand why?"
     A hesitation and her gaze flicked across me as if she could find the answer there. "I was told you would be watching, but I wasn't told precisely why," she said.
     "Huhn!" Jenes'ahn grunted and scratched her chin. "How much do you know about him? Do you know where he came from? What he's like? What he knows?"
     "We were asked to search the archives for information about things like him," Makepeace said. "And the questions I'm to ask him... they are very... peculiar. About many different things. Things scholars have been debating for years; some things I've never heard of before; some things I thought were jokes, but the masters were all most serious."
     I whistled through my teeth and Rris ears twitched. "You've been dropped right in it, haven't you," I offered and looked to the Rris sitting next to me. "Well, perhaps we can teach her a thing or two, a?"
     Chihirae looked amused. "You could show her some of your plays. They say more than we could. And they always get a good response."
     The laptop was in its case. Makepeace watched as Chihirae unzipped it and pulled the tablet out. "They said you had a book of your knowledge. Is that it?"
     Chihirae chittered as she opened the lid. "A. I thought the same at first. Not a book: a library. See?"
     Makepeace leaned forward, looking puzzled as the desktop flashed up and Chihirae carefully used a fingerpad to touch there and there, then took a card from the case and slotted it into place and sorted through folders. "Hai!" Makepeace breathed. "It's full of pictures... They're... what are they?"
     "It's where he came from," Chihirae told her as she flicked through images in the directory: Scenery and animals and plantlife. And portraits and still life and landscapes and cityscapes. New York, looking down Park Ave; Sydney with the Opera House gleaming in the sun; Hong Kong at dusk, a massive cargo airship looming over city towers glowing with giant screens and patterns of lights; Athens beneath its smog, the ancient acropolis basking in the sun on the hills above the city; Prague and the rows of bridges over the Vltava.
     Makepeace was staring, her mouth hanging open. "They were saying he had a book that held all sorts of knowledge. This is... this isn't what I'd expected. How does it light up like that? Is it some sort of lantern show? Are all those pictures inside it..."
     "Enough," Chihirae cut off the flood of questions and chittered. "I can't answer all that, and there's plenty more to see. Where was it... Ah, there."
     Video. Audio. Makepeace jerked back at the opening fanfare. "I like this one," Chihirae said as Attenborough's Planet Earth started, but I doubt Makepeace heard. Her eyes were riveted on the screen as the HD video filled the screen with color and the cabin with sound. Her head cocked back and forth, like a cat staring into a fishtank. I clamped my mouth shut and tried not to laugh.
     Jenes'ahn looked from me to Chihirae, her features expressionless, ears motionless.
     Later that day the weather turned foul. The persistent overcast grew heavier and lower. Gradually the winter countryside was whitewashed behind a cold, gray pall. Snow fell. A dusting of tiny ice particles coalescing from the mists at first, but gradually growing to become flecks the size of dimes swirling in on biting winds. Intricate ferns of frost crawled across the insides of the windows. The little stove struggled to keep the cab warm and didn't quite make it. I found a blanket and buried myself under it. Chihirae insinuated herself under it as well, leaning against me, and that helped.
     Makepeace was utterly absorbed by the notebook, by the pictures and movies and sound. She stared with eyes like saucers, her jaw hanging as she watched The Blues Brothers, Sanguine, Lord of the Rings. Dammit, I think she was drooling a little. When Jenes'ahn decided to interdict and cut her off I thought it'd come to blows. She backed down, but she wasn't happy. From then on she was an unstoppable torrent of questions.
     Due to the weather we didn't make the intended stop that day and had to spend that night in a fleapit of a road stop to rest the animals. The place wasn't one a proper inn, just one of the countless cheaper way-places along the road. There wasn't much beyond the stables and a communal room, which was just a hall with a central fireplace and small box beds around the walls. Not nearly enough to go around. I let Chihirae take mine and settled my sleeping bag on the main floor with the others. It was closer to the fire, and besides, the niche with the bed wasn't nearly long enough for me anyway.
     Next day dawned stark white and cold blue. We set off across a snowbound countryside. The forests were deep and bare. Where Rris settled the trees were cleared for fields dotted with bison: huge, shaggy mounds of hair crusted with ice and snow, huffing steam while farmers dumped feed from wagons. Houses huddled under roofs laden with white while smoke from chimneys sketched near-vertical lines into the heavens. Fences were hung with icicles. Occasional streams and culverts were thin trickles through frozen slush.
     The caravan plodded onwards. I rode for a while with Chaeitch, Rraerch and Rohinia. We talked shop and they started my lessons on what I should expect in Bluebetter. That was exciting. When the excitement got to be too much, I stretched my legs and walked for a while.
     We passed through land that'd been civilized for a long time. The wild forests were gone, cut back to copses and small woods. Snow-covered farmland spread out across the rolling countryside like white sheets covering a sleeping figure whose form was just hinted at by the occasional, low hills. Sometimes we passed farm buildings; occasionally just the remnants of farm buildings: tumbledown skeletons overgrown by the winter and wilderness. At least once a day we passed through small hamlets, villages. They tended to follow the same layout: a mainstreet or crossroad with the public buildings set along that. Wood and stone construction; a mixture of glazed and shuttered windows; steep roofs blanketed with snow. Occupants turned out on porches and along the streets to watch the procession. Probably for lack of anything better to do. Cubs ran alongside, trying to foist trinkets: little hand-carved wooden figurines; simple toys; small knives or utensils that must've come from the local smithy or bits of jewelry crafted by someone who had some time. They tended to keep their distance from me and just stared. Once, on a high piece of land — a hill or a drumlin or something — I saw a fortified tower. It looked empty, abandoned, and stood on the skyline like a broken tooth for the hour it took to pass out of sight.
     We made decent time that day. By nightfall we'd made Three Full Moons. It wasn't a city, just a very small town, but it was growing and spreading beyond its somewhat decrepit walls. There were new buildings, new warehouses and stores which looked prosperous. Certainly the coaching inn we lodged at that night was a damn sight better than the previous night's accommodation.
     The evening meal was cooked in a proper kitchen and eaten at a real table. I was put in what was probably the best room in the place. It was quiet, private, tucked away up its own separate staircase on the top floor. The room had a battered wooden floor, polished to a ruddy glow by age, use and beeswax. There was a real bed, panes of watery glass in the windows, a black, cast-iron stove and one monster of a bear-skin rug.
     "They must've built the place around it," I said to Chihirae as we sat on the huge rug. The lumpy black-iron stove was throwing out heat against the encroaching chill of the room, the air above the almost-glowing metal wavering. Furiously blazing coals threw a fitful red glow across the hearth.
     Chihirae chittered and then flinched as my fingernails pinched. "Ach! Careful!"
     "Sorry," I said. "That one... ah, got it."
     "Another?" she grumbled then the fur up between her shoulders twitched spastically and she yowled, "Rot! Ah! Up! Up! Get it."
     The previous night's accommodation had been a fleapit. Literally. The bed I'd so graciously given her had already been occupied and she'd come away with her own threering flea circus. I'd spent the past hour working over her pelt with the fine-toothed brush from her grooming kit — like a nit comb, only intended for all-over use. I'd caught dozens of the hungry little bastards.
     "I think you're going to need a proper bath," I observed.
     "Why aren't you bothered?" she growled.
     I shrugged. "I guess they don't like my taste."
     She snorted and scratched vigorously at an armpit. "Rot. You're serious?"
     "They might just prefer the taste of Rris. Or your fur. Where I come from there are... I don't know your word... Small flying, biting insects. Long legs. They make a whining noise."
     "Mosquitoes," she offered.
     "A? Mosquitoes. They're attracted to the look of human skin."
     A snickering sort of noise. "I'm sure you're relieved something is."
     "Hey!" I poked her. "I don't see you complaining." A laugh. "Complain? Why should I complain? I'm not the one who's freezing his bare hide off."
     "A? Who nearly set her fur alight sitting too close to the fire? Look! You're singed."
     "Huh!" Her body jolted as she huffed at that accusation. "It's warm here, cold there. One would have to be a fool not to."
     "Speaking of fools," I said offhandedly and crushed another scurrying speck between my nails, "what did you get up to with our daring protector and accidental diplomat today?"
     "Mikah," she hissed and craned around to glance momentarily at me over her shoulder then settled back and chittered. "Sometimes I despair."
     "That's good."
     "What? Why?" she asked.
     "It's only sometimes. I must be improving," I grinned. "Look, they didn't give you any problems did they? Makepeace seems good enough, but I've met some of those scholars before. They forget there's a person answering those questions. They can get a bit carried away."
     "Huh. No. No, she was no problem."
     "She wasn't?" There was something in the way she said that. "And what about the Mediator?"
     Chihirae growled. Her tail twitched. "Mikah, they're trying to understand you," she said. "I know you don't like them around, but they're trying to learn why you... why you do what you do. It's the only way they can understand so she was asking me..."
     "What'd she ask you?"
     She coughed, then twitched an ear. "About the other night. She asked why you were so annoyed. She asked why you didn't continue."
     My hands stopped and I sat up straighter. Chihirae's ears twitched and she cast another little look back over her shoulder. "What? What business of theirs is that?" I asked.
     "I told you: they're trying to understand you, Mikah. You aren't something they can just make go away, so they want to know what you are; what you do; why you do it."
     Of course they wanted to know me. To me the Rris thought processes were distinctly weird, alien. They did things in ways and for reasons humans simply wouldn't. And that worked both ways: to them I was risky because by their lights I was unpredictable. They couldn't anticipate my actions. They were looking for the chinks and fissures in the armor of my essence that they could get their claws into. Some more leverage.
     I regarded the fluffy furry back of the woman in front of me, tawny and grey, speckled with black. The pointed ears with their high tufted tips, the whiskers and cheek ruff faintly limned red against the glow of coals. She was a... a huge vulnerable spot. The Mediators had found that weakness. They'd used it without hesitation. What else were they looking for? Anything they could get, probably.
     "She asked if she could watch," Chihirae said quickly, as if she were just yanking the band-aid off quickly.
     "What?" I blinked. "Watch what... oh."
     "She asked that," Chihirae continued in a quiet voice "And then of course Makepeace asked questions. The Mediator wanted me to ask you. To see if you..." she trailed off.
     "Just tell her 'no'," I said.
     "You're not angry?"
     "With you? No. With her... Perhaps I should save some of these fleas for her, a?"
     "Mikah..."
     "No, I was wondering why she'd have you ask that question. She could have done it herself easily enough."
     "Perhaps she thought you'd agree if I asked?"
     "To something like that?" I snorted and stroked my fingers across her back. "Then Makepeace would want to watch, then local villages and it'd just go from there. Next thing we'd be selling tickets. Not my idea of a good time."
     "Mikah," her ears flicked back and she turned her head, her profile highlighted by the sodium glow of hot coals. "It really bothers you?"
     "You're not actually... You're not agreeing with her?!"
     "They keep asking questions, Mikah. They don't understand... they still suspect you might have influenced me somehow."
     I sighed heavily. "I thought they'd given up on that fucking stupid idea."
     "I think the other night just brought it up again. And the fact you're not willing to discuss it with them... They don't... They suspect you're hiding something."
     It wasn't the sex that was the issue for the Mediators. They knew about it. Hell, it seemed half the country knew about it, or had heard the rumors and little stories that crawled off into the oddest corners and spawned weirder ones. What they wanted to know was... why she did it. Why a Rris woman would do that. With me. And they thought that I had some sort of influence over her; that I was able to control her in some way; that I might've used that influence in some indefinable way with some Rris nobility. I'd ridiculed those thoughts. Damn it, there'd been times with... with another woman when I know Rris had spied on our lovemaking. Chihirae and I had been caught in flagrante delicto by the Mediators themselves and they'd seen there'd been no coercion. But still they'd asked proof: they wanted to see for themselves. I'd refused. And the more I'd denied it the more they'd pressed. They'd annoyed me, but I didn't know what they'd been saying to Chihirae. Now, I was concerned it might've been too much.
     "You're not actually saying that you'd do it?"
     "If I had to." She tipped her hand in a shrug. "Mikah, it really doesn't worry me so much."
     I had to close my mouth. That simply wasn't what I'd expected. "You can't agree with them. What they're wanting is... it's just foolish!" I said, my voice raising.
     She looked back at me and I heard the sigh. "I don't have to agree with them. But I would show them they are mistaken. The more you try to pull away from them, the more they will sink their claws in. So, I would say it's a small thing. But to you, it's not. And I don't think that would be right. Not after the other night."
     I started to answer, to throw back a quick retort. But... But, she was my teacher. She was the Rris, the one who should know. It was her own kind she was talking about. I couldn't say she was right, but then I couldn't just say she wasn't because I simply didn't know.
     I ruffled my fingers through her winter coat. "You think... they'll press the matter?"
     "I think the more you evade, the more they'll chase."
     That sort of behavior sounded familiar. I shook my head and stroked my hand down her shoulder. "What do you think I should do?"
     "My advice would be: get it done with," she said quietly. "But that is from me to another person." A pause and her ears wilted slightly. "Sorry."
     Even she slipped like that sometimes. It was okay — I understood what she meant. "I... Not with them watching. I don't think I could."
     "It's such a problem?" she asked. "Those plays on your library... Mikah, almost of them show courting behavior or mating of some sort. They do that for audiences, don't they?"
     "It's acting," I said. "Not real. In life there are those who could do it — with humans you'll find there are those who will do anything. But I can't."
     "Then it's a learned behavior? It is possible then. You just have... personal issues."
     My fingers stroked her as I considered that. I remembered examinations by Rris physicians. It'd been incredibly stressful. "Perhaps," I conceded. "I probably have a lot of issues, but... I still... I don't think I'd be able to do that. Not in front of them."
     She chittered and flicked her ears, then turned herself around, shifting under my hand to turn and crouch right in front of me, nose to nose, a breath apart. Her eyes glowed in the dimness and I could feel the heat of her exhalation. "I wouldn't ask that," she said.
     "But... what about without them?" she murmured.
     That wasn't so difficult.

Another day on the road. Outside was snow, ice, firs, and more snow. Just for variety. Inside was Rris and extended lessons on Bluebetter and Land-of-Water historical relations. They seemed to revolve around old cycles of paranoia and bickering over some rivers and border markings which then escalated to skirmishes and then on to a couple of outright border wars where towns were lost — or taken depending on your side — before things deflated again to a period of détente. That seemed to be where we were at the moment, with both leaders actually taking steps to reconcile things between the countries. Most of that involved playing nicely with each other and not mentioning the war, but they were trying to strengthen trade relations. Land-of-Water had things Bluebetter wanted and they had things Land-of-Water needed.
     Chihirae and Rraerch and Jenes'ahn rode with me. Between them they were able to start me on a history of the unsteady relationship between the countries that went back over a thousand years. The ancient records of ancient wars over ancient border lines that'd ebbed and flowed back and forth over the Rippled Lands. There'd been kings and queens who fanned the flames, others who worked to reconcile, but there always seemed to be friction between the nations.
     It seemed that the area was a disputed territory, especially the passes through the areas they called the Rippled Lands. These were the areas around what'd been the White Mountains and Smokey Mountains in my world; the hilly region where the land folded into countless ridges running most of the length of the Eastern Seaboard. The serried rows of deep valleys and ridges were rough going for travelers. The passes and cuts through those hills were valuable pieces of land.
     Rraerch told me about the passes that existed and how all of them at some time or another had been fought over. There'd been local lords and barons who'd wanted control over these routes. Strongpoints and castles had been built and held and taken and burned and built again. Townships had risen and prospered and sometimes died off. Lands had been brought and sold and ceded and by this time the border wasn't so much a line as a jagged, fractal, moving thing that jumped back and forth between the nations.
     Chihirae knew the history of some of those conflicts — and there'd certainly been enough of them. Sometimes just minor skirmishes, other times affairs that'd dragged on for a decade and exhausted the parties involved. Rraerch had stories: there were times one side would use bandits as a pretext to reinforce the local garrisons and, of course, the other side would respond in kind; there was the clichéd tale of the small band that'd held out against vastly superior forces until help arrived. Only thing about that story was that it'd been so long ago that no-one was entirely sure exactly where it happened or what side had been attacking and who'd been defending. Rraerch thought it might've happened more than once and the similar stories had just melted together over time; there was the Gone River pass, named after a major slip had diverted the flow of a river and left a new pass through a ridgeline open and there'd been brutal squabbling over who controlled it; the story of Fort Estari, which had changed hands a dozen times; the tale of the incident at the Land-of-Water outpost of Broken Side, where the fort had been found empty after winter, abandoned, with ample supplies and no sign of what'd happened to the occupants; the debacle at Three Stops where two exhausted armies tried to surrender to each other; the battle at Sara Fields where both sides slaughtered each other to a standstill in a morasses of blood and mud.
     There hadn't been an incident that nasty for over a hundred years. There were still harsh looks and bared teeth between countries, but things stayed at a low simmer. Rraerch said that the reasons for that varied: fighting disrupted trade and profit; both nations had other, more serious concerns on other borders; and the Mediator Guild had grown in strength and influence.
     I wasn't sure about that. Jenes'ahn certainly lauded the Guild's stabilizing effect upon Rris affairs, but I wasn't sure I believed it. Humanity had shifted away from waging war at the drop of a helmet as well, but that tended to be because the wars had become so expensive in both human terms and — more importantly to those responsible — in monetary and infrastructure costs. You might win a war, but you'd find that all you'd won was a nation of smoldering rubble, an exhausted populace, and a massive debt. As for occupation: forget it. Modern weapons meant an unwilling populace could bleed an occupying force dry.
     The day passed as they talked. Afternoon grew into evening. The shadows lengthened, the sun sank. We crested a hill and Long Way was before us.
     The town lay nestled on the southern flank of a hill on the northern shore of a small lake. In the last of the winter light the lake was a great splinter of white ice with handfuls of little boats drawn up on the shore. Terraces sprawled up the hillside, white walls and snowcovered roofs glowed gold in the last dregs of sunlight. Trickles of smoke climbed from chimneys, dissipating into the pink sky. Up on the crest of the hill stood the remains of another old tower, overgrown and tumbled. The manor houses built further along the ridge looked a lot newer. The town wasn't a huge metropolis, but was still larger than any place we'd been to in the past few.
     Rris were out and about on the streets. Taverns and stalls were open. Smells of woodsmoke and cooking food insinuated themselves through icy streets that narrowed and twisted around in serpentine switchbacks. Residential buildings tended toward two and three story affairs — the usual Rris construction with blank walls facing the world and the windows and doors facing the interior cloister. Upper floors hung over the streets, the last of the light just hitting the high places where icicles hung from eaves. Our inn was a busy building whose main gate faced onto a public square containing a frozen fountain and the tail-end of a small market of brightly colored stalls amidst a field of trampled grey snow. Dozens of furry faces stared as our convoy clattered past, the soldiers dismounted from their wagons stalking alongside and making sure no one got too close before we passed under the main arch, through the freezing shadow of the entry tunnel and into the inn's court.
     The staff got straight to work, tending to the animals and coaches. Us VIPs got hustled into the warm fug of the inn itself. I noticed the atmosphere as soon as I stepped through the door — mixed odors of damp fur and food and burnt wood. The place wasn't that busy, but it smelled like it had been, and quite recently. Our advance party had probably kicked other guests out to make room for us. Inn staff froze where they stood and stared when I entered the room. A shaggy, grey-furred male in a stained apron shook himself and hissed orders. The staff looked at him and hurried about their business, trying very hard not to stare at me. I wondered what they'd been told. I wondered if they'd been reimbursed for their other loss of business.
     The evening meal was a roasted bison. Or most of one, judging by the amount of meat coming off the grill over the fire. Yeah, Rris are omnivorous, but under duress and I often think that given the choice they'd prefer all-meat diets. After that we retired to our rooms. A few minutes after that I answered a furtive scratch at the door to find one of our guards lurking outside.
     "Sir," he said, almost whispered. "Ah Ties sent me for you."
     I recognized him. "Blunt?"
     He blinked. It was a dumb question, but in that light I'd have trouble recognizing even Chihirae. "A, sir," he said, looking down the hall. "Ah Ties asked me to get you. He wishes to get you the drink he owes you. Quickly, before the officers notice."
     I glanced back over my shoulder. Chihirae was watching with her head cocked.
     We hastened us down the hall to another door, then into a small maze of twisty back corridors, then finally through a tiny side door into a narrow alley. Nestled in between two buildings, it was a canyon of blackness with a feeble moonglow visible between rooftops overhead. I balked as the situation made a bad connection with a nightmare in my past. In the gloom a shadow moved and hissed, "You took your time."
     "Who's that?" I asked, tensing and trying to see some sort of detail in the night.
     "It's Ah Ties, you blind fool," Chihirae said, prodding me.
     I heard a snort from the figure in the darkness and he shifted. "Come along. Before your other friends show up," he said.
     They had to help me along the alley, stumbling over unseen clutter and debris. I swore as I stubbed my toe on something wooden and Chaeitch hissed at me to try to be quiet. Once we were out of the confines of the alley there was a bit more light: A moondog ran its ring around the splinter a moon hanging in an icy clear sky; occasional lanterns hanging outside buildings or the glow from windows threw warm pools on the snowy streets. Enough light that I could see enough to make my own way. I hunkered down and turned the collar of my coat up as I followed the others up the hill, trudging through streets slippery with trampled, dirty snow, ice and frozen animal droppings.
     "Sir," Blunt was muttering to Chaeitch as he hurried along, "this really isn't a good idea, sir."
     "Calm down, soldier," Chaeitch said, stalking along in his long mauve roadcoat. "You're with us, so we have a guard, a?"
     "The Mediators won't think of it like that."
     "You think Mikah is going to sell secrets? We're just going to get a drink. I owe him that. So do you."
     "Sir..." Blunt looked worried.
     Chihirae's ears had perked up. "What do you owe him?" she asked Blunt.
     He glanced at me. "My life, ma'am."
     "Long story," I hastened to add. "And I still think we're even. If you hadn't been there, Blunt, those people could've gotten nasty."
     A Rris passing the other way on the street stared at us, at me, and kept walking and staring, turning and gawping open-mouthed. Until his feet found a patch of ice under the snow and rocketed out from under him, sending him sprawling on his tail in the trampled snow.
     Chihirae looked from the pratfall to me. Her ears went back.
     "Ah, I've still got it," I grinned at her and buffed my nails on my coat. She snorted exasperation.
     We headed uphill for a while, Chaeitch leading us back and forth on switchback roads and steep little sidestreets and alleys. "Where're we going?" I asked him after about five minutes. "You said something about a drink, but we're running out of up."
     "There's a place I know," he said. "I came through here many moons ago. The guard commander showed me, did the introductions. It was around here somewhere... Ah, there."
     'There' was an unobtrusive stone building. Down a small side lane was a door, the cheap green paint peeling to show old wood. Alongside it there was a plaque: a slab of stone set into the wall with a picture of what looked like a ship with billowing sails plowing through a mountain range. Or perhaps they were badly drawn waves. In the light of a single, flickering oil lamp it was difficult to tell and I didn't have time to look to closely. Chaeitch pushed the door open and we entered into smoky gloom.
     It was warm in there. A cramped little staircase in a narrow brick barrel vault descended a few steps down into a cellar room. I had to stoop to get down that staircase, straightening in the room at the bottom. It wasn't a small space. The floor was flagstones, wooden columns of polished wood stood like tree trunks in a half-light of gloom and smoke. In between the columns a circular wooden counter ringed a huge open firepit. A battered metal hood and flue hung down over the fire where a mountain of coals spilled dull reddish light. Staff worked behind the counter, pouring drinks and tending to cooking food. The pool of firelight didn't reach the corners of the room, but did lap over the tables around it, casting shadows into the murk beyond. All around the room, at tables and in booths on the peripheries, pairs of molten sparks flashed as heads turned our way and Rris stared.
     "This is a good idea?" Blunt murmured.
     Chaeitch kept on regardless, leading the way between occupied places to an empty table off to the side. Eyes gleamed and hissing whispers scuttled around the shadows as the locals watched us. Staff behind the counter stopped what they were doing and also just stared. Some chittering laughter rose and tapered off. A lanky, scruffy-looking older Rris in a stained apron hurried through the tables toward us. I could hear his claws on the flagstones as he hurried to intercept Chaeitch who simply met him with a pleasant expression.
     "Ah, aesh Hesai. It's been a while, a?"
     The Rris in the apron looked taken aback. He squinted at Chaeitch, turning his head this way and that, putting me in mind of a scraggly weasel. "Sir? Do I know you. We really can't have animals in..."
     "It was a couple of years ago. Ah Tiherosi introduced us. I purchased the case of Shahie Hills from you."
     The other paused momentarily, his eyes narrowing, then his ears went up. "Huhn," he grunted and scratched at his chin with a thumb claw. "A. I recall. That was my entire stock. Ah Ties, wasn't it? My rule still stands: no animals in here. That," he leveled a finger at me, "get it out."
     "You want to tell him or shall I?" I asked and didn't wait for the usual histrionics. "Yeah, it talks. I talk," I shrugged. "Now that that's out of the way, can we do business?"
     "What?" he looked from me to Chaeitch, to Chihirae and Blunt. "What is this?"
     "This is Mikah," Chihirae volunteered.
     "And it talks," he said flatly, staring at me now.
     "Yes, he does talk," Chaeitch said. "He understands what you're saying. He's also a friend of mine, guest to the King and my patron, and under Guild protection."
     "Huhn. And you wander in here with it? What's your prey?"
     "A table, some food and drinks," Chaeitch said. "We've been on the road from Shattered Water. Bad food and infested beds. We wanted a change; something good. I had been under the impression you provided such, but you seem somewhat reluctant to accept paying guests."
     The innkeeper looked me up and down. "Paying I've no objection to. Scaring my customers or shitting on the floor, that I do object to."
     Chaeitch's amiable expression didn't flicker. "He won't cause problems. If he does, you will be reimbursed. We're quite willing to pay for a meal. And I'm after some more of your products, if they're available."
     From the wrinkles that creased his nose as his muzzle twitched, the other was weighing up avarice against distaste. His gaze shifted from Chaeitch to me to Chihirae to Blunt and back to me. Finally he smoothed his ruffled fur as the potential for business won out. "Your coin was good last time."
     Chaeitch's ears relaxed a little. "If your wares are of the same standard, it still is."
     Decision made, the proprietor huffed reluctant acquiescence and we were directed to a table, not too near other customers. The seats were low wooden stools, not cushions, and the table was of unpretentious pine — thick planks of ancient walnut scored and grooved by uncounted years of claws and other sharp implements. Even sitting I was a good head taller than the others at the table. I stood out, and I felt it. As the evening went on the crowd of Rris in the shadows around our table grew and shifted. It got quite busy in there. I wasn't sure if it was just the normal dinner rush or whether word of the spectacle was getting around.
     The crowd kept the kitchen busy. Staff busied around the central fire, inhuman silhouettes profiled by the light from heaped coals bustling around in a scene straight from Dante's imagination. Smoke hung around the rafters. Metal clattered and clanged as pots were lifted on and off racks, oven doors were slammed. Voices mingled into a background susurrus. And the food was good; certainly better than the dried, smoked and salted road fare. I recall there were things like rolls made of something like pita bread filled with some sort of stuffing that tasted of venison and cranberry and wine: dishes made from layers of different meat and spices rolled into meat loafs: chunks of smoked meat with dipping sauces. I went easy on those. Some of the 'herbs' Rris used for flavoring were quite toxic for me.
     The alcohol however, that was safe. I partook. Then had some more. Drinking was easy and distracted me from the watching eyes. There was wine, which was considerably better than some of the vintages I'd been given. There were also other variations of fermented plant matter, some of it like ale or mead; some of it like brandy. There was something like vodka, a vicious fluid that burned blue. Chaeitch explained that the town was a link to the Finger Lakes district, where a lot of the best Land-of-Water breweries were located. A lot of traders stopped at Long Way to sell and buy products such as those.
     We drank and talked and drank some more, and despite the unfamiliar surroundings I started to relax. I remember my laugh sounded loud and out of place in amidst the Rris voices. I remember there was still more alcohol and I remember some of it had quite a kick.
     Next thing rememberable was freezing cold night air on my face. Away in the dark distance, beyond a frozen lake, beyond snowbound hillsides turned to abstract shapes of light and shadow in the faint starlight, away beyond the night sky, a nebulous river of light climbed through a black dusted with diamond points of light. In the motionless icy winter night they scarcely glittered, just glowed steady like pinpoints of burning ice.
     I don't recall leaving the warm fug of that establishment. I'd had enough drinks with a total alcohol content high enough to pickle a pachyderm, so the evening got a bit blurry. Obviously at some point we'd left. We'd wandered. The cold night air had gone some way to restoring sobriety and I'd found myself in the upper reaches on the town, on a quiet flagstone terrace overlooking descending rows of snow-muffled rooftops, seated on an icy stone bench with my feet up on the low parapet before me. The furry figure on the bench beside me was just wearing a tunic, but her fur was fluffed out, dusted with twinkles of ice. I huddled down into the velvet liner of my coat and contemplated the view before us.
     "Just imagine that you're standing on a planet that's evolving,
     Revolving at nine hundred miles an hour..."
     "Hur?" Chihirae started with an exhalation that glowed like the starlight. When she looked at me her eyes were just black pools. "What was that?"
     "Oh, just thinking."
     "Huhn," she rumbled and leaned back, looking out at the town below and the stars above. There were a few distant shouts down in the town. Otherwise, silence for a time.
     "Mikah?"
     "A?"
     "They're beautiful, aren't they."
     "Oh, yeah."
     A chitter. "Why is it a line across the sky like that?"
     "Uhn," it took a second for me to collect my thoughts. "We're in a group of stars. Billions upon billions of them. In the shape of a wheel with curved spokes, like this. We're in one of the spokes looking at the rest of the wheel, so it seems like a line to us."
     "A wheel? It turns?"
     "Yes."
     "Billions is a lot of stars."
     "And there are b...bb...billions of groups of stars like that," I slurred my Rris badly as I gazed up at the night sky. More stars than I'd ever seen back home. "More than billions. More than grains of sand on all the beaches you can think of."
     "A. That is a lot," she chittered. "What is at the middle of this wheel? What does everything turn around?"
     "Not sure. Perhaps a place where space and time dies. Where everything is so crushed up that nothing can escape." I waved my hand in the general direction of the band of the Milky Way. "Objects distort space. They draw other objects toward themselves. If you drop a stone, it's drawn to the earth. It falls. But the earth is also drawn to the stone. By very, very, almost immeasurably little, but it is drawn. The... more solid an object, the more it draws things. A bigger world would draw the stone faster and harder. A world that isn't bigger but is more solid would also draw the stone to itself faster and harder.
     "In the middle of these wheels many, many worlds and suns have been drawn together. They crushed together and their attraction squashed them. They became like rock, then like iron, then more solid than that. They keep... pulling things in: planets, moons, stars, everything. Now they're so solid they even pull in light. Light can't escape, so you can't see them. They bend... space and time. Great devourers. Great Attractors. Black holes. We don't know what's going on in them. Perhaps they go back to the beginning of the universe, or perhaps they're where other universes start."
     Her arm bumped against me as she shifted to peer at me. She sniffed. "You're drunk," she pronounced after a time.
     I grinned. "You know what? You're right."
     She cuffed my arm, her claws pulled then tipped her head back to stare at the sky again. "Other universes, huh? Like yours?"
     "Or yours."
     "Huhn," she huffed again. "Stars like grains of sand; universes branching like trees... Where did they all start? Huhn? Where did time begin? What does your kind say about that?"
     I laughed. "Oh, rot, so many things."
     "Such as?"
     "Some say there was nothing, which then exploded and started the universe."
     "How can nothing explode?" she asked.
     "Given enough time anything can happen. Given infinity, everything does."
     Chihirae laughed, an exhalation of white cloud, then pondered for a second. "And what do the others say?"
     "Oh, that the world was made by god in seven days. Or it fell off god; or it's a dream; or it was spun from clay; or a god gave birth to it; or it was fished from the sea; or that it rides around on the back of animals... the usual."
     "Oh, rot," she laughed again. "You really are drunk, aren't you."
     I leaned back, grinning at the stars. "You asked."
     "You..." Another squint at my face. "Are you actually serious?"
     Perhaps I should've thought through things a bit more clearly, but I wasn't in any state to do any real thinking. Hell, I didn't even remember how we got there. So, I just charged on ahead, propelled by the warm glow of borderline alcohol poisoning. "Serious? Wars have been fought over the details of exactly which bit fell off or who fucked whom and gave birth to the sky."
     She tipped her head back, looking up at the sky again and scratching her chin in a perplexed manner. "That word you used... you've never really explained that. It's something to do with this? Why? Why would anybody say something like that, let alone fight about it?"
     "Not really sure," I said. "Maybe it's easier to just say 'who did that' than try and find out why it happened."
     "What does that mean?"
     I waved a hand. "We used to... Humans used to... I guess we still do... If something happened it had to be done by somebody. I think it's built in. If the wind blows; someone did it. There's a storm; someone did it. A funny-shaped rock; someone did it."
     Still tipped up to the sky, her muzzle creased and she gave a quick little shake of her head. "That's... peculiar. Why?"
     I shrugged. "Because it's what we are? Because it's easy? You don't have to think too much, just go with what feels right. Perhaps it's a control system. The human who wants to lead you tells you there's a big, angry invisible person only he can talk to who makes rain and wants you to do certain things. If you don't then the angry one will wash your crops away. Oh, and he'll talk to the big, angry person for you if you give him, say, a percentage of your crops."
     "Who would fall for a trick like that?"
     "A surprising number. Perhaps they don't at first, but there's some lingering doubt. Then, perhaps, there's a storm up in the hills and because someone positioned a village in just the right place there's a flood and the crops wash away."
     "It was a rain storm. With rain comes water."
     "Ah," I raised a finger. "But he said the crops would wash away, and he was right. And people would be wondering, 'What else can he do? Perhaps there's something to this'."
     A snort. "Preposterous."
     "A. Or just different," I shrugged again. The stars in an incomprehensible infinity glittered down. "Perhaps it's just a way to break all that down into something a mind can hold. Make the strange person-shaped. Make the incomprehensible something you can understand. Or perhaps it's just that when it comes down to it; when it comes right down to the very marrow, people find they prefer to believe that rather than accepting that the universe is quite capable of existing without you. At least someone is paying attention to you."
     Chihirae gave a thoughtful-sounding growl. "And what do you think?"
     "With everything that's happened to me?" I waved a hand to try and encompass infinity. "If someone is responsible for all that, I'm seriously thinking of lodging a complaint."
     She chittered and then gaped a yawn, her pink tongue curling. Away in the town there was more shouting, the yowls rising up above the quiet rooftops.
     "Wonder what's going on down there," I asked absently. "Someone having a celebration?"
     "Or perhaps looking for you?" Jenes'ahn suggested icily.
     "Nah," I shook my head. "If they were there'd be..."
     Shit.
     She was standing behind us in her long coat dusted with falling snow and ice. Arms crossed. Ears flat. Glowering with a creased muzzle and eyes that were black pits.
     "Oh, crap," I sighed.

"And you were thinking what, exactly? Were you thinking? Did that enter into it?"
     I winced. The angry tirade and brilliant morning sunlight met somewhere inside my head and did horrible things behind my eyes. The jolting of the carriage didn't help any.
     Jenes'ahn leaned forward from the opposite seat, elbows on knees, squinting at me as she sniffed. "You are sober this morning, a?" she snarled. "You can hear me."
     Oh, I could hear her alright. That wasn't the problem. Hangovers: Rris don't seem to get them. Maybe it's something to do with a faster metabolism so they burn it off in the night, I don't know. I did get them, and I had one. Yeah, drinking a couple of liters of water the night before is a good idea in principal, but not when you can't just get clean water out of a tap. For the Rris, as it was back home a hundred years ago, the drink of choice is something with enough alcohol in it to kill the bugs. Good for what might ail ya.
     The previous night was a blur. Jenes'ahn hadn't laid hands on me, but she'd been plenty pissed. There'd been shouting and guards had hurried us through streets and back to the inn. There were raised voices and accusations. Chaeitch looked sheepish. Chihirae looked frightened. I didn't see Blunt anywhere before I was bundled off to my room like a naughty kid. At that point I didn't really care; all that was on my mind were two things. The first was a long and overdue piss in the chamber pot, the second was bed. I think I got them in the right order. Sometime thereafter a furry weight landed on top of me and I groaned as she tunneled down into the sheets. Something was said about someone something angry, but I was past caring.
     Until the morning came and with it a throbbing hangover. I groaned as the drapes were thrown open, but there was no mercy, just bustling Rris and a hasty breakfast. I wanted coffee, an O.J., but there was none of that, just some bread and salted meat before we were hustled out to the coaches.
     Then came the dressing down from a furious Jenes'ahn. I thought she might've had time to chill overnight. But no. Rather, she seemed to have used time to get a run up. She made sure Chaeitch and I were in the coach, sat herself opposite us, her fur brushed glossy smooth, her leather coat freshly oiled and her expression absolutely frozen. Beside her sat Rohinia, leaning back and as imperturbable as ever.
     "We weren't trying to travel anonymously," she said. "But neither were we trying to make a scene. Then, last night, we get word that there was such a scene at a tavern across town. A talking animal. People were going to see it getting drunk. That was quite a surprise since the only talking animal we knew of was in its room in our inn. Only, when we looked, it wasn't. Nor was it at the inn.
     "We had to search the town. The town guard became involved. Then the town lord became involved. We had to explain to her; we had to explain to the local Guild. There was altogether too much explaining to do. So, now, I think, you should do some."
     I looked at Chaeitch. He looked back. "We went for a drink," I said.
     "Why?" she said, slowly and clearly.
     "Why not?" I asked. "Umm, you never actually told us we couldn't."
     She froze, then her head slowly tipped to the side. I could see she was trembling visibly, twitching as if one muscle were fighting another. "No," she conceded, and her voice was a rasping growl. "You are right. We didn't. We didn't specifically tell you not to get drunk and pick loud arguments in public. We didn't specifically tell you not to go wandering off into dark and dangerous parts of town. We also didn't tell you not to eat hot coals! Perhaps we had foolishly assumed nobody would be so childish and reckless to do things like that."
     "This isn't supposed to be dangerous," I sighed. "An easy journey, you said. And we've been journeying for the last five days. We just wanted to go for a walk and get a drink without all the commotion Mediators and soldiers would cause."
     "And you didn't think you would cause disruption?"
     I shrugged. "A drink in a tavern. I was a paying customer. They respected that."
     "And we had a guard with us," Chaeitch added.
     "Ah, him," she rumbled. "He will be..."
     "Leave him," I said. "I put him in a difficult position. He didn't have a choice. Leave him."
     "Now you ask favors?"
     I met her stare. "It wasn't a request."
     Her ears went flat, her eyes turned fury-black, and tendons snapped hawser-taut, raising tight ropes under her fur. And Rohinia put his hand on her arm, "Constable," he said quietly. "You need to walk for a bit."
     Jenes'ahn actually had whites showing around the rims of her eyes as she looked at him, then gave a wild shake of her head, shoved the door open and was gone.
     I watched Rohinia calmly lean over and pull the slamming door shut. "Angry, angry young woman," I mused, winced as the carriage bumped.
     "I don't blame her," Rohinia said. "You do have a way of rubbing people the wrong way, you know."
     I looked at Chaeitch and raised an eyebrow. "Do I?"
     He winced and waggled his hand. "Apparently."
     "Huhnn," the Mediator growled. "We did have an agreement, did we not?"
     "Yes, sir," I said. "Really, I didn't think that was a breach of it. We went out for a drink. It's a small town, away from Shattered Water. They are farmers and merchants. No-one would be interested in me." I thought about that for a second, then asked, "Would they?"
     He scratched his chin, then asked Chaeitch, "Aesh Hesai delivered everything you requested, did he?"
     Chaeitch twitched. "You know about that?"
     "I was told of his reputation. There was a reason you went to him, a? He provides goods, a? Things that might otherwise be difficult to come by?"
     "Yes," Chaeitch said, wrinkled his muzzle slightly. "A case of wine. And the sausages there are pretty good. I wasn't aware it was a serious issue."
     "It's not. But that's not the only items he deals in. He also brokers information: business dealings, interesting little items of note, unusual happenings and the like," Rohinia said, ticking off the points with a stubby clawed finger. "What we did find interesting was that he'd been asked to keep an ears cocked for any unusual official traffic passing this way. Anything out of the ordinary."
     "I wonder what that could be," I said. "And who asked?"
     A shrug. "It didn't specifically mention you. And traffic like that could be of interest to any number of people, legitimate and otherwise. It's the timing that's curious. As for who asked — it's the usual dealings: anonymous notes and middlemen and cutouts."
     "You don't know."
     "Not an idea," he said straightforwardly. "That's why we don't want you running off by yourself. Aside from the fact that some nervous farmer may try and pitchfork you — again — the idea that unknown persons are offering money to have a person like that keep watch for something like you is... disturbing."
     "You realize that every known country on the planet is probably interested in where I am and what I'm doing? That's not counting all the Guilds who're fighting for advantages."
     "We're quite aware. They have procedures. They have their own agents. This didn't feel like that."
     "But you don't know for sure."
     He gave me a level look. "Not for certain, but sometimes it's better not to tease the bear," he said, then sighed at my expression. "All we know for certain is that someone is taking an interest in you. This is quite understandable, but we really don't know who they are or what their intentions are. Until we do, it's only prudent for you not to take unnecessary risks. Do you understand this?"
     I looked at Chaeitch. "A. We understand." Why did I feel like a school kid who'd just been reprimanded?
     "Good," the Mediator said. "Now, Jenes'ahn feels that your word on this is worthless and she would prefer a more reliable form of restraint, such as manacles or hamstringing. Myself, on the other side, I think that this was a misunderstanding. You wouldn't have knowingly taken your teacher into a dangerous situation. I think we can put it down to ignorant misadventure and give you another chance. You will co-operate, a?"
     I didn't like the way he'd dropped Chihirae's name in there, but I nodded. "A."
     "Very good," he said.
     "I have to ask," I said. "Is that bad-mediator good-mediator routine standard for the Guild? Because it's rather old."
     He looked surprised. "You think she was being bad?"
     "Wasn't she?"
     "Oh, no," he said mildly, and then quietly, without fuss, his muzzle wrinkled back from his teeth and he bared fangs. "I've had many years more experience and can assure you I can be a great deal worse than her. You really don't want to find out how much worse, do you."

For the rest of the day we rattled our way eastwards. My mood didn't get any better, and neither did the weather. Great cliffs and ramparts of dark arcus clouds had been building on the western horizon and by late morning it was apparent they were storming our way. The Rris also spotted them and there were muttered comments. By midday the clouds were looming over us, massive and amorphous bruise-bellied sky-beasts rumbling and butting heads high above. For a brief, surreal moment the world glowed with gold and orange, for only moments before the clouds rolled overhead and the sun was blotted out. Colors went to grey and static and the temperature plummeted and the wind that came was a shrieking icy thing clawing through the trees and whipping barrages of ice and snow before it.
     Visibility was gone, everything beyond twenty meters lost behind driving blasts of airborne ice. Snow piled up, buried the road under swirling drifts. Trail markers turned to indistinct lumps in the gloom. The animals lowered their heads as they plodded on and drivers up on their benches huddled down in their coats and hunched their shoulders against hail coming in like shotgun pellets. The air was freezing: white frosting crusted on exposed Rris fur, on whiskers and muzzles.
     We didn't make our scheduled stop at an inn that evening. The entire convoy had to pull up on the highway, while the drivers could still see where it was. We hunkered down in the wagons and carriages while gusts rocked them to and fro and ice crystallized on both sides of the window panes. The little heater struggled against the chill and periodically I heard a rattle from it as someone opened the outside hatch to add fuel. For the rest of the day the storm howled and raged. There was nothing but a freezing, swirling chaos of driving snow. The sun was somewhere up there, but it was smothered and the day was reduced to a dragging grey twilight. As hours passed that gloom just got deeper until at some point it tipped over into night.
     The seats in the carriages folded down across the foot well, converting the interior into a surprisingly comfortable bed. You could have squeezed four Rris in there, if they were feeling sociable. The Mediators had decided Chihirae was going to stay with me; possibly because she was the only one they felt wouldn't try to get classified info out of me; possibly because she already knew so much; and possibly because she was the only one who was really willing to. Neither of them seemed to be feeling social enough to squeeze in with us, so either they trusted us together or they were really pissed off with me.
     So we had the carriage to ourselves and I certainly wasn't complaining. We lay under heavy covers with our feet to the heater and watched movies on the laptop. Beneath her winter pelt she was wonderfully warm, almost feverishly so. I felt that heat and a pulse that beat with an inhuman rhythm. It kept me warmer than the heater could. Light from the screen flickered in the cab as we watched videos: old movies. Black and white silent comedies full of pratfalls and silent humor that she could understand; nature documentaries full of color and dramatic places and exotic wildlife; some old random episodes of Grand Designs. She liked those. She could understand them.
     Outside, the storm wailed and thumped the coach with gusts of cold. Inside, we watched brightly colored South American birds flitting through jungle and I translated as best I could for her. Finally the battery warning came on. It was going to need a sunny day to charge again, or I'd have to cross-charge from my light or phone battery. No matter: it was late anyway. The lights went out and we lay back in the dark and I felt her finger touching my arm, stroking the skin gently.
     "They were angry, a," she said.
     "The Mediators? Oh, yes," I grinned ruefully.
     "You shouldn't tease them so. What we did, it wasn't right."
     "Why?" I asked. "Don't we have the right to go where we choose?"
     "Not if it means we might be getting people into danger," she said. "You know that."
     I lay quietly. Was she... was she hinting at what had happened to her? That I'd drawn her into some serious trouble and it was mostly by luck that I'd been able to save her. "I just don't like the thought of being a prisoner again," I eventually said. "I'd like to be able to go out and see some of this world without them around."
     Was that sounding too whiney? I shook my head. "Last night was... it might not have been right, but it was fun, a?"
     She snorted and gave me a poke with that finger, claw only partially expressed. "Fun, a. Smart, not so much."
     "Awwww."
     "Mikah?" she said, then paused, stroking my skin again. From the position of her body against me I could sense she was watching her hand. In the dimness I couldn't see anything. "Mikah, what you talked about last night... How much of that was real and how much was the drink?"
     "I..." at first I wasn't sure what she meant. Then I remembered. "Ah..."
     "It was true?" I felt her shift around so she could see my face. That was a one-way sort of exchange. "You were serious, weren't you. I wasn't sure. Some things you mentioned sounded insane. Or drunk."
     "Little of both, perhaps," I offered.
     A chitter. "A. But some of those ideas were far beyond anything I've ever heard. Something that eats light and suns. I've never heard of anyone ever talking about such. But then I've never heard of anyone saying the world was spun from clay. Is that true?"
     I sighed. "It's true they say that. Whether or not it's actually a fact... that's pretty doubtful. I think it's one of those things that's different between us. Rris do things that seem normal to you but seem... peculiar to me. I think this is something my kind do."
     "Like what?" she said. "What do we do that's strange?"
     "Besides having so much hair and tails and ears and claws and teeth?" I blinked in the darkness, my mind choosing that moment to draw a blank. I took a breath, thinking through all the things I'd had to change to try and fit into the Rris world. "It's everything that's up there," I eventually said and tapped her head. "You don't look at the world like we do. It's in your writing, in your art and your food and clothes and architecture. It's in your actions and mannerisms and your society. I think you... you try more to see things as they really are: you don't believe in the impossible or ridiculous just because it's easier; you don't follow an individual just because they act as if they're in control. But you do you follow authority that doesn't promise you anything. You accept leaders for reasons I can't understand."
     I moved my hand, stroked soft winter fur in the darkness. It was bristly and chilled on the outside, with silky warm inner nap. In the darkness I couldn't see her face — her expression, but in my mind's eye I saw her lips quirk up and a flash of teeth as she smiled, corner of the eyes crinkled as she laughed. Of course she did nothing of the sort, but that was what my mind persisted in turning her into. Did she do the same to me? "And you stay with me even though I can't be what you want... what you need."
     A huff of breath. "Is that why you're such a bother to the Mediators?"
     "You seem to respect them simply for what they are. I can't do that."
     "Mikah, they are powerful."
     "So people keep saying. And that makes it seem all the more wrong."
     "Why?"
     "Our history is full of groups that gained control through power and intimidation. It usually didn't end well."
     "And in our history there've only been the Mediators," she replied. "They weren't always called that: they weren't always organized under the Guild, but what they did didn't change. And what they did helped a lot of people. It worked. That was what was respected."
     I thought of organizations that'd started off as individuals. They might have been good people with the best of intentions, but the organizations had outgrown the individuals and somewhere along the way the organization ate them, used their ideals and turned into something hollow. The ideals were still espoused, still echoed in the promises and rhetoric and floral speeches, but they'd turned from their original purpose to being used to support the edifice itself. And some of the deeds done in the name of those organizations were horrors that most people couldn't even imagine.
     I could explain that to her. I could draw comparisons between Mediators and fascists or Inquisitors or Bolsheviks or Nazis or Stazi. But, would that be accurate? Or would it be applying my standards to people who worked differently.
     "You know them better than I do," I said. "But... they take themselves so seriously. I can't take someone who takes themselves so seriously, seriously." She snorted and poked me again. "No, I'm sure Jenes'ahn had her sense of humor surgically removed. What do you think she does for fun? Practices glaring in a mirror? Long-distance growling? Perhaps collects spores, molds, and fungi?"
     Her laughter chittered, bright and warm in the darkness. A hand slapped against my arm. "You're making jokes. You're trying to deflect me, a? Is that really the reason?"
     She lay against me under the blankets. I could feel her fur prickling. I could feel her hand still on my arm, on my wrist. She could feel my pulse, could probably hear my heartbeat, could perhaps smell my uncertainty. Outside, the wind whined and the carriage creaked as it rocked.
     "I don't know," I said, stretching out and pushing my feet a little closer to the heater. "They just rub me the wrong way. They are always there. They act as if everything is their right. And she wanted to watch us having sex. That's just wrong."
     "Still worried about that?"
     What I was worried about was that they'd thought that going through Chihirae might get a different answer. What were they thinking? Were they fishing for something? Trying to see just how much I'd bend to accommodate her wishes?
     "Everything they do worries me," I said and scratched at her ribs. Her breath washed across my chest where she rested her head. "Hey, Do you feel like doing what she asked, only without her?"
     "Hmmm?" she nuzzled against me. "It might not be the best idea."
     "Why?" I asked. Was someone likely to check in on us?
     "You might not notice it, but for the next few days we'd be riding in a closed box that smells of our sex." she said. "'I'm sure the others would find it interesting."
     "Ah." I bit my lip and stared into the darkness. That was a point I hadn't considered and it dumped a pitcher of cold water on my ardor. "Perhaps not, then."
     A low chuff of air. "No?" In the dark she might have been amused. She certainly didn't sound that concerned. "There'll be later. Sleep well, Mikah."

Fresh snow squeaked beneath my feet. High overhead wispy streamers of clouds glowed with a golden sunrise.
     The storm had blown by sometime in the small hours of the morning and splinters of pale blue sky appeared as the clouds fractured and dissipated. More snow covered the world, covering the road in a smooth, white blanket with just the tops of stone markers along the roadside visible. The sun had yet to touch the ground and the air was still freezing, a chill mist hanging just above the ground in the woods on either side of the road. Boughs bent under the weight of more ice. Occasionally a distant crack like the retort of a handgun rang out as a piece of wood somewhere snapped under the load.
     Chaeitch had borrowed an elk from one of our escorts. It was a big beast, with a haughty, vacant sort of expression and silver cups on the stubs of its antlers. He rode it easily alongside me as I trudged through the snow, leaving footprints that didn't match anyone else's. We weren't moving very fast: the snow covered the road in a deceptively smooth layer that could've hidden anything beneath it and we didn't need a broken wheel on top of everything else. A good number of soldiers were riding out front of the rest of the convoy, just beating a clear path through the drifts so the carriages and wagons could follow in their tracks.
     "I really hope someone allowed for this," I grouched. "If this happens too often we're going to be half a year there and back."
     He'd been staring at something off in the trees, his ears pricked. At my comment he flicked his ears, shifted in the saddle and took the reins in one hand as he waved a shrug with the other. "It's not unexpected. The road to Bluebetter's pretty good and the snow should ease once we're passed the Rippled Lands."
     I kicked at the snow at my feet. It was almost up to my knees. The new boots worked, really well. They were warm and dry, but they didn't have hard soles. If I trod on a sharp rock I felt it. "You know," I said idly, "bikes would be faster than this."
     "What are those?"
     I hadn't mentioned them before? I looked up at him. That was different, looking up at a Rris. Although, even on elk back they were still only about half a body higher that I. "You must've seen them in those videos. The two-wheeled vehicles."
     "You said the motors would be complex."
     "These ones are powered by the rider. With pedals."
     "Ah, those," he said thoughtfully, reaching for the little pouch on his belt containing his smoking paraphernalia. "Give me an elk, I think. Those contraptions look like they would just fall over. I believe someone tried to make something like it. He based it on a spinning wheel with a treadle to turn the wheel. It didn't work very well."
     I grinned. "A crank and chain is probably better. They're the most efficient land transport you can have. Twenty kilometers an hour easily, and you can do it all day. No fuel needed. You could do this trip in maybe just over a week. Maybe a bit longer with this snow."
     "You think?" he looked amused. "I think our experiences with the steam engines might prove otherwise?"
     "What do you mean?"
     Chaeitch had his pipe tamped and his little silver striker out, trying to hold the reigns, the pipe and the lighter at the same time. He hesitated, then held up the lighter. "Like this," he said. "This is a copy of yours, a? But still the striker wears out and the fuel in it can leak. It's better than the older ones, but still not quite as good as your one."
     He held it over the bowl of his pipe and flicked it repeatedly. Finally the weed in the pipe caught and he puffed it to life, then champed the stem into the corner of his jaw and flicked the lighter to me. I caught it, turning it over in my hands. It was a new one, with a gleamingly austere milled cylindrical steel body and a striker that looked like it'd been adapted from a flintlock.
     "It's the same with the engines we can construct. With the materials we can work with, a casing light enough to move isn't strong enough to withstand the forces inside. I think your vehicles might be the same — they would be heavier than perhaps you expect. And you'd make the wheels out of what? That plant extract that your other vehicles use? We still haven't located any plant samples that produce sap with those characteristics."
     "Did all right with the guns," I said.
     Chaeitch's ears momentarily laid back and I saw him looked over at nearby troopers with their carbines. "There was a bit more urgency with those," he said. "A few more people pushing to make them. I don't think that your two-wheel [contraption] would light their tails quite as much."
     I thought about some armies that'd moved deceptively quickly on those things that moved fast, quietly, and didn't require feeding, but kept those thoughts to myself.
     "They're still compromises," he was saying. "So much effort to make a few that still don't really compare with what you know. The time and cost... just the people to make the machines to make tiny parts..." he took a drag on his pipe and blew clouds into the cold air. "There are things we couldn't do: the self-loading mechanisms; the igniters; the clean-burning powder. Rot, just the cartridges are still difficult to make — the chemicals are expensive and dangerous. And when you look at the number of skilled people involved in just that... if you consider similar numbers on other projects, I think we will have personnel shortages. Some planning and prioritization's going to have to be done."
     Their population wasn't very large. Even Shattered Water, the largest city in Land-ofWater, barely numbered a million souls. Whereas humans could reproduce all year round, the Rris were restricted by biology to a single breeding season a year. It put a choke on their numbers. Perhaps that was a reason they hadn't spread out over more of the world. It also meant that whereas the human industrial revolution had a veritable ocean of cheap human labor available, the Rris had a much more limited pool to draw on. I've always hated that simplistic term 'work smarter, not harder' espoused by idiots who read books about cheese, but that was what the Rris would have to do.
     "Or you're going to have to cooperate," I said. "Bluebetter's in no better position than you. They can't do everything by themselves either."
     "Huh," he grunted and puffed thoughtfully. "But if you try to even the load, who's going to want to carry the weapon production and who will want the handy two-wheeled crank-and-chain machine?"
     I nodded. "That's going to get interesting."
     "Your definition of interesting?" he asked.
     "What's interesting?" a voice interrupted. Jenes'ahn was stalking up behind us. On the snow she made no sound whatsoever.
     "How you keep turning up just at the right moment?" I sighed. "I thought it was a bit quiet. Where've you been?"
     "Pissing," she said, still obviously suspicious as to what we'd been talking about.
     "Mediators do that?" I asked.
     She snorted, not rising to the bait. "What were you two plotting?"
     "Not plotting. Just talking," Chaeitch said.
     "I would very much like to believe that," she said.
     Chaeitch sighed, a cloud of smoke hanging briefly. "Constable, I have to apologize about the last night. I was the one responsible. I shouldn't have asked Mikah along with me."
     She chuffed. "Huhn, at least you have the courage to admit it. So, why did you?"
     He waved a shrug, "Because... Huhn, I thought he'd enjoy it. He's our guest and he still doesn't get out that often. I didn't think it'd be a risk: we were there to vouch for him; and in a town like that, who would have any idea what he actually was?"
     "I'm sure the Lord would've had an excellent idea," she retorted drily. "If he'd hooked claws into Mikah, if the Guard had collected him, he likely wouldn't have been harmed, but I'm sure he'd have tried anything to talk to Mikah alone for a time."
     "You have a very suspicious mind," I said.
     "You came to Westwater," she replied. "A small town, a? These small places attract less attention from authorities, so sometimes they attract more attention from others who want to avoid those authorities. You learned this and you," she jerked her muzzle towards Chaeitch, "you know this. That's why your associate brings his wares through places like this. Cheaper than paying government tariffs, a?"
     Chaeitch had the decency to look abashed.
     She turned to me, wrinkles marching up the short fur across the bridge of her muzzle. "And the world hasn't forgotten you. You can be certain that agents of every land under the sun watched you leave Shattered Water. Courier bags will be jammed with embassies and operators and spies requesting instructions from their handlers. Rot, most of the traffic on the road with us are probably agents for various parties. You doubt me? Ask at any stop; they will tell you the traffic is surprisingly heavy for this time of year. Many fast-moving individuals needing fresh animals and lodgings. I can't say what orders they'll have. If they are sane and prudent they will simply be watching you. If they're feeling ambitious they might try something more drastic."
     I frowned. "Are you expecting something like that?"
     She scratched at her side, now scanning the wilderness of trees off toward the rising sun. "No. We're not. We just don't want you putting yourself in a position where someone might be tempted to do something. Not even necessarily anyone involved in this business: just some drunken fool who took fright at you could be bad enough."
     That stung. "I could just buy them another drink," I said and Chaeitch laughed and Jenes'ahn's ears went back. "That was a joke," I hurriedly added. "I'm sorry about what happened the other night. I shouldn't have gone along. It's just... It's good to get out away from all... all this," I gestured at the squads of armed soldiers riding along ahead of us. "I just sometimes forget that I don't really fit in with the rest of the crowd."
     Jenes'ahn started to say something, then bit the response off and subsided. Her tail was still twitching back and forth in the snow. "It would be more appreciated if we could be sure you won't do it again," she grumbled.
     Chaeitch chittered and his elk decided to take the opportunity to toss its head, rolling an eye toward me as it sidestepping, almost bumping me with its shoulder. Still smoking his pipe he gave a twitch of the reigns and got the beast straightened out. "Huhn," he growled. "It likes you."
     "Mikah," Jenes'ahn said thoughtfully. "I've never seen you riding. Can you?"
     "Of course.," I said. "Motor bike, mountain bike... you name it."
     "Mountain 'ike? What sort of beast is that?"
     "A machine," Chaeitch sighed. "We were discussing them before. No, Mikah can't actually ride."
     "Perhaps it's about time you learned."
     "Do you think it's necessary?"
     "I think it could prove very useful if we have to move fast."
     I looked dubiously at the elk Chaeitch was riding. It wasn't as big as a horse and looked a lot more spindly. "How fast and how far do you think one of those could go carrying me?"
     "I think we would have to find a larger animal," she said. "You don't approve of the idea?"
     "I don't know," I said. "I've never tried riding before." I shrugged, "I don't suppose it can hurt."
     "The commander should have an animal you can use."
     "What? Now?"
     "Why not?" Chaeitch asked with a flick of an ear. "You doing anything else at the moment? And after all: what can it hurt?"

'What could it hurt?'
     Certainly not the Rris. My first riding lessons were wonderful entertainment for them. Our escort commander found a suitably large animal from among his troops: a big, dark beast with beady eyes and steel caps on its trimmed antlers and an attitude I wasn't entirely happy with. The saddle was a thin leather affair, shaped for a Rris' posterior rather than my own, but I wasn't going to be using it for too long. Chaeitch showed me how to mount up while Jenes'ahn and more troopers than was really necessary watched as I got one foot in a stirrup and tried to swing the other over and the animal shied away from me, setting me hopping through the snow before I was able to swing up. It bellowed, reared, and the next I knew I was laying in a me-shaped depression in a snowbank staring up at drifting flakes. Rris faces leaned over.
     "This isn't going to be easy, is it," I said.
     The animals didn't like me. They didn't know what was trying to hop on, but they knew that it wasn't a Rris and they weren't happy about it. At least the spectators got some entertainment from the spectacle of me clinging to the animal's neck while it tried to find some way to shake the unfamiliar passenger off. And the snow broke the worst of the falls.
     I stuck with it for the rest of that morning. By afternoon the elk was either too exhausted to put up a fight, or it'd started to become accustomed to me. Even though the animal was still twitchy and skittish, I was able to stay seated for long enough to start to learn how to actually ride. The prognosis was that it was going to take a while. Chaeitch cheerfully told me he'd had saddlebags with more grace and ability than me. I cheerfully told him to go piss up a pole.
     It seemed that the weather had exhausted itself after the storm. It stayed fine, clear, bitingly cold. We made our next stop on time and the next few days followed similar routine: up early, on the road all day and halting at whatever road stop was most convenient. At best those places were mediocre; at worst they were dives apparently designed to encourage patrons to make an early start: dark, smoky, smelling of Rris and animals and with beds nobody would want to spend any more time in than was absolutely necessary.
     Day by day the scenery was changing. The open, rolling countryside gradually became steeper, more hilly, more of the horizon lost behind hills bristling with scrubby forests climbing their flanks. The journey from Shattered Water had been through landscape scraped smooth by ancient glaciers bulldozing their way down from the north. What we were entering was the outlying foothills of a land sculpted by geological activity: hills and ridges uplifted where continental plates had clashed and deformed into vast wrinkles. Back home they'd been the Appalachian Mountains — that washboard range of weather-smoothed ridges and peaks stretching up the eastern seaboard. Here, the Rris called them the Rippled Lands.
     As the hills grew higher and steeper the road was a white ribbon winding along the path of least resistance, along the ways cut by creeks and rivers flowing back to the west. They weren't narrow gorges cutting sharp and sheer channels through igneous rock, but rather weathered and time-worn valleys where the waterways had meandered for millennia, melting their way through softer earth here and there so the hills were sometimes kilometers apart. Many of those hills overlooking the road had watchtowers on them; some just broken stubs and ruins, others in good repair with lights visible in the windows at dusk. Settlements sprawled across those valley floors, farmland and villages laid along the road. At valuable locations — passes and forks and junctions places where a couple of valleys intersected — larger towns had taken root and thrived or perhaps merely survived.
     The mindsets that'd lived in and grown these towns were different from the ones that'd built towns back where I'd grown up. Back home, in North America at least, the towns were recent, manufactured things: carefully planned, built on routes of trade or traffic, and open, free to spread out. The ones we were passing through here were like old European towns in that they were built on promontories, hills, or other high ground. Defensible positions on rivers or trade routes. With fortifications of walls and towers and gates. Some of the revetments weren't in great repair, with damage mostly from weather or scavengers. They'd started as small settlements and then the curtain walls had gone up and the towns organically grew into their constraints like snails into their shells.
     The days had started to become routine. I'd ride with different Rris and the Mediators would ensure we spent the time as productively as possible. Chihirae tried to continue my language and writing lessons, sometimes sidetracking into lessons in English for her. She couldn't speak it very well, but she was learning to understand it. When riding with Chaeitch or the Mediators I'd have to go over the lists of proscribed subjects they'd worked out. And those were numerous and complicated. With Makepeace... those times got interesting. She had her own lists of questions from her superiors and she worked through it, methodically and thoroughly.
     She... wasn't stupid. She knew what she was asking and she understood a lot of my answers. Well enough that she could drill down into subjects that I wasn't familiar with. Even down into things I'd never really considered.
     One of those morning we'd just left the town where we'd spent the last night. We departed through what they called the river gate onto the eastward road. The river itself wasn't much: a shallow, ice-choked creek meandering along the bottom of the valley. The town had been built where it joined to a larger stream flowing off to the west, but we were following the tributary to the east, squinting into the rising sun.
     Makepeace, Rohinia and Rraerch were riding with me that morning. Makepeace had the floor and she had her bundles of notes out and was flipping through them, trying to find questions the Mediators hadn't censored. As we trundled on out of the city she was asking about crop volumes, ways for increasing yield. I was looking out the window, up at the huge old gates and the city walls. There was a fort of some kind on a crag overlooking the town, the river and road: a circular, crenellated tower with peak-roofed buildings at its base. As we passed below I squinted up. I could see chipped craters from what could only have been cannon fire pocking its faces.
     "Sir?"
     "Hmmm?" I twitched. Makepeace was holding her notebook tight with both hands, staring at me. Rohinia was just watching.
     "You didn't hear, sir?" she said and her ears drooped. She looked down at her notes.
     "Sorry, no. I was..." I gestured at the window. "Was there fighting here?"
     "Possibly, sir," she said bent her head to see what I was referring to.
     "There were frictions in this area," Rraerch provided. "Some time ago. Landholders getting overzealous taxing the traffic and objected when the monarchy told them to stop."
     "Ah," I said, craning to look up at the walls. The stone blocks were big, and they climbed for over ten meters. It was a considerable bit of engineering.
     "You don't have the like where you're from?" Makepeace asked.
     "Not walled towns," I said. "Well, not on this continent. My kind settled here after guns were built, so walls were becoming... not very practical. Over on the European continent, there are a lot of walled towns. Were a lot... you know what I mean."
     Rraerch chittered and Makepeace looked thoughtful. "Your world is like ours, only with your kind, not Rris?"
     "A."
     "Are the cities and buildings in the same places?"
     I shrugged. "A natural harbor or a lake or river or pass are good places for anyone to build, and those are... mostly in the same places. So there are cities in the same places, but they don't look anything alike. Places like this... I'm not sure."
     "Then natural things — hills, rivers and rocks are the same?"
     "Not identical. Your maps show the continents are roughly the same, but when I first came here I found hills and rivers didn't match my maps. Big things, like the lakes and the great falls, the bay Red Leaves is in, they're in similar places, although not exactly the same. Broad strokes look the same, but not the fine details."
     She cocked her head slightly. "So the biggest difference between our worlds is us: your kind and Rris. Why is that?"
     "Perhaps because of the time difference between land and living things. The continents are moving all the time; mountains rise and fall; rivers cut new passages. But so slowly. From their perspective our lives are less than the blink of an eye. If the age of the world could be compared to a single day, then the time our peoples' have been around would only be a few seconds. Not enough time for the worlds to differ significantly."
     "You think there was a point where our worlds were the same and then... split? One with Rris and one with your kind?"
     I had to wave a shrug. "I can't say it's right. It's just an idea. It was thought that there might be an infinite number of worlds... of universes. Imagine time... like a tree, or a river: every time a decision is made then there's another fork made. Another branch. More universes where every possibility is possible."
     "Ah," was all she said and I watched her as she looked at her notes, amber eyes blinking. Dust motes jangled in the light slanting in through the windows as we rattled along.
     "Those are what you're supposed to ask, are they?" I asked.
     Her ears flicked back. "Huhn... Sir... they're my questions, sir. I was... I wanted to know more about how you came here."
     I grinned. "That makes two of us. But no-one's telling me anything."
     Her gaze jumped between the other two Rris, then back to me. "Why here, sir? Why now? If there's an infinite number of possibilities, then why this world?"
     "You're asking the wrong person," I said. "All I have are ideas. None of them are certain. It's possible that while there are an infinite number of possibilities, not all of them are realized. Perhaps some of the junctions only happen at important moments, such a moment that defines whether or not a species will start to think. Or when life forms. Or when a star goes out.
     "There was a thought experiment put forward — it wasn't actually done, it's just an example. An animal in a box with a vial of poison and a mechanism that has a random chance of opening the vial. The box is closed. From the outside you can't tell if the vial is broken or not; whether the animal is alive or dead. It exists in a state of possibility. Until that box is opened again and observed, that's all it is — a state of possibility."
     A snort from Rohinia. "It sound preposterous."
     "As I said, it's not a real experiment. It's just an example."
     "You think this idea of worlds is like this?" Makepeace said. "That they have to be observed to be created?"
     "Perhaps the other way around," I said. It was an interesting thought. "Worlds split off when events are observed? Perhaps it's not just when different possibilities are available, but rather when decisions are made. It would limit possibilities. Perhaps explain why I ended here."
     "Where else could you go?"
     I laughed. "If a new universe grew at every possibility, the possibilities could be almost literally endless: a world where life had never developed; or the air was poison; or there was nothing but water; or where one molecule went one way rather than another; or there was no planet at all... Instances like that I think would be more common. When you consider that, it's remarkable that I ended somewhere that's almost identical to home; except for one thing."
     "People."
     "A," I propped elbow on windowsill, hand on chin to watch the scenery. "It just makes me think there might be a reason."
     She seemed to think that over for a bit, then said, "From what you say, the worlds are overlaid. There was no real distance involved. You travelled... through, not to."
     I looked over at her, a little startled by that. Rraerch twitched an ear. "I... uh... I think I'm understanding that correctly," I said. "A, I suppose that would be right."
     "So worlds exists in the same place as this? Less than a step and it's that easy to go from one to another?"
     She wasn't looking at me, but rather at some place only she could see. There were gears turning in there. "I don't know about easy," I said. "I've never heard of it happening."
     "How can they overlap? How can many things exist in the same place"
     I considered, gave another shrug. "Perhaps they exist in different bits of time, just slightly offset. Each universe having an instance between the clicks of a clock, so we don't notice. Perhaps they're in the space we don't use..."
     "What does that mean?" Rohinia asked. "'Between the clicks'?"
     "Um," I wasn't sure how to explain that. "If there's a smallest time unit in the universe — the shortest point of time it's possible to have — they would run consecutively, one after another to give an impression of... smooth time. Like my picture box: the moving images are actually sequences of stills, each slightly different. When viewed rapidly they give the illusion of movement. What we view as time could be a series of these very small slices. Different universes could be... slipped in between one another. Like many books having their pages interleaved, joined into a single volume... all first pages, then all second pages... Seen from outside it would seem bulky and unwieldy, but from the view of the individual stories in the book, they are still there; they are still being told. They wouldn't perceive anything different. As we don't notice if there is no time. Because if there is no time, there is no change nor time to perceive change."
     "How could you not notice that?" Rraerch asked.
     "It's a matter of perspective," I said and received questioning looks. I tapped the wooden window frame. "This is solid, a?"
     The Rris looked suspicious. "So I have been led to believe," Rohinia said.
     "From our perspective it is," I said. "But out there, what's that?"
     "A tree?"
     "From here you call it a tree. Get up close and it's bark and branches and leaves and moss and twigs. Get closer still and it becomes wood and plant material. Closer and it becomes cells. Then the material that makes cells. Then it becomes what we consider the... bricks of solid things that join to make just about anything from wood to water to the gasses you breath. When you get even closer, even smaller, things start to get strange. Everything becomes... pressures... effects. Pushing and pulling. Like magnetism, to use a bad example. But at those levels there is nothing actually solid."
     I tapped the wood again. "So what you think as solid is really mostly nothing. It just seems so from our limited view? ... ah... perspective. It isn't always entirely accurate."
     A snort from Rohinia. "If that isn't solid, then why can't I walk through it?"
     "Water isn't solid. Can water go through water?"
     "I..." he started to retort with the obvious answer, then snapped his jaws shut and frowned. Rraerch was looking amused. Makepeace was scribbling furiously in her notebook, the tip of her tongue poking from her mouth. "This is true?" he asked, sounding suspicious. "It's not another of your jokes?"
     "Not a joke," I said.
     "Then there is a point to it?"
     "Just that what you see certainly does depend upon where you are observing from."
     Feline faces watched me: one impassive, one curious, one looking to see how the others would react. I took a breath: "Sometimes what might seem obvious can be quite wrong. We've learned that often enough. My kind has... had some ideas that might explain how our worlds exist, but nobody knew for certain that they're right. They're just ideas: nobody's ever been able to test them."
     "Until now," Makepeace said, still scribbling cross hatches in her notebook.
     I hesitated, then smiled. "I'm not sure I count. It's not like I can tell them."
     "No, but you can tell us," she said and looked at me, her eyes bright. "And perhaps someday someone can use that." Then she looked at the other two Rris and seemed to cringe back in on herself. "Perhaps... someday," she sighed and went back to her prepared list. "Huhn, but for now, perhaps just these questions, a?"

I sat myself on the icy stone, looking down across the clearing to the valley. Under the light of a waxing moon and a universe of stars the world was a contrast of coldly-pale snow and inky shadows sketched by barren trees and bushes. Footprints tracked a line of disturbed powder and underlying bracken across the otherwise smooth field back the way I'd come, back down the hill to the road and the river, to where campfires glimmered away through the trees. Behind me, the other stones loomed; fractured angles buried beneath undergrowth and snow.
     It was quiet up there on the hillside. It'd been a long day. Another long day trawling through countryside that changed so slowly that you weren't sure you were actually making headway. Then, in the afternoon, a coach had crabbed sideways on ice and ended up in a ditch. No injuries, but a comprehensively borked wheel needed to be replaced. The decision was made to camp there while that work was done rather than push ahead to the next town. After a day in a small cab that was starting to smell quite distinctly of unwashed Rris and human the peace and clear air were welcome. Cold though. Dry. I felt it in my sinuses. My breath frosted. Bare skin tingled. I snugged my collar a little closer and for an hour or so watched the stars wheeling over the mountains.
     A flitter of movement flittered at the edge of the clearing caught my eye. A ghost drifting through the trees. For a second she paused at the edge of dark and shadow, eyes flashing as she looked my way, and then pressed on, following my footprints. I watched her. Stalking across the clearing. The calf-deep snow sticking to the fur of her feet; ice flecking her winter pelt. Her breath curled about her shoulders. It was a still night with no wind to add to the chill, but the light kilt and vest she was wearing seemed too flimsy to offer much warmth.
     "I thought it'd be one of the Mediators," I said. I'd told them I'd be gone on a toilet break. I'd taken a bit longer than I'd intended; I'd walked a bit further. There'd been the clearing and... the ruins. They weren't much anymore: just scattered lines of huge old stones and toppled walls, but they'd been enough to make me curious.
     Chihirae stopped a few paces away and waved a shrug. "They wanted to," she said. "They were getting agitated. I told them I thought you just wanted some time alone."
     "Thank you," I said, quite sincerely.
     "They thought you'd had long enough. They thought someone should check on you," she said, brushing snow from her muzzle and then looked awkward. "I thought I would... they let me come."
     She trailed off, regarding me with those eyes that I'd known for years. The eyes I'd woken to when I'd been injured in her care. "I'm not disturbing you?" she ventured.
     "Nah," I smiled. "It's not as if I was very busy." I patted the cold stone beside me. "Come on; join me."
     She cocked her head, then flashed teeth at me and scrambled up onto the rock with a burst of movement and ticking of claws on stone. I caught her hand and hauled her in. She gave a little 'herp!' as she came up and dropped into my arms, sitting across my lap. For someone who's only about five foot tall, her weight still startled me. There's muscle under that fur.
     She looked up at me. "Hai." Or perhaps it was, "Hi."
     "Hi yourself," I said down to the lady in my lap. "They're not too angry, are they?"
     "You'd be overly concerned if they were?" she chittered. "No. No, they weren't angry."
     "No?" I raised an eyebrow. "After what happened at Long Way I thought they'd be spitting nails."
     She shifted. "Ah... they didn't think you were in trouble."
     "They followed me, didn't they?" I sighed, "Christ, I was just taking a toilet break."
     "Sorry." A shrug. "I confess: She came back. She said you were sitting here. She wasn't sure why."
     "And they sent you to find out?" Alone? I didn't ask that.
     She leaned back against me. I closed my arms around her and heard her rumble, "You get tired with all the talking and the questions. This is... quiet; some time alone. I understand."
     The winter air was still and clear and icy. Stars glittered over the valley. Down the hill the campfires glowed, underlit smoke sketched ghostly columns in the moonlight. She looked past me, at the mounds in the snow behind me, at the softened outlines of old stones stacked atop one another. "What is this place?"
     "I have no idea. You can't tell me?"
     "It's on the road, so just an old border tower?"
     I'd looked around. It was a circle of stones. Perhaps it could have been a tower, once. "It seems... older."
     She looked around again, then at me. "Do you want me here?"
     "Why'd you come? You could have told them back there."
     "You don't."
     "Hey," I leaned forward, looking down at her; the tip of one of her ears tickled my cheek. I got a hand under the light hemp of her vest and scratched at her fur. "I never said that."
     "No," she said and shifted on my lap. "I thought you might want some company while you were alone."
     I blinked. "Ah, I'm not sure I heard that correctly."
     A low rumble vibrated through her body. "I meant that we can be alone together. For a while. Do you understand that?"
     "A. I think my teacher can't have been very good," I said.
     She twisted in my arms, nipping at my neck, sharp little teeth clicking at the air. "Not good, a?" she growled, eyes glittering black and amber.
     "Or maybe it was just me," I hastily added.
     An ear twitched. "Oh, yes. Far more likely," she said and settled back as I opened my coat wide for her, welcoming her into my embrace, folding it around the two of us. I could feel her, the heat from her body under the fur like a little furnace.
     "Not that cold," she rumbled again, her head resting against my chest as she leaned back. "But thank you."
     "You think I was doing this for you?"
     A laugh. I felt her breathing matching mine, or perhaps it was the other way around. When I inhaled I could smell her scent: it always reminded me of summer hay and sunwarmed dust.
     "How are you doing?" I asked her. "I mean, on this journey. You're comfortable? They're being polite to you?"
     "Huh, they're all being most kind," she said. "But you're being kept busy."
     "Oh, yeah. And I thought it was going to be a relaxing trip. That Makepeace has enough questions for twenty."
     "Can you blame her?" Chihirae asked. "Something like you... she must have all the questions I had. When you couldn't talk to me, I got frustrated. I wanted to shake the answers out of you. But all you had were those few words."
     "You taught me those," I said, remembering. Some good things; some not so good. "Perhaps you are a good teacher after all."
     A chitter and she relaxed back against me. "Going to a university was a dream of mine."
     "You didn't?"
     "Oh, rot. Who could afford it," she sighed. "If you're not sponsored or high class, then university will never be for you."
     "You got an education."
     "I apprenticed under my own master for a full five years before I went out on my own. Lying Scales hired me for a few seasons," she said in a reminiscing tone. "It was good work. Better than some alternatives, but it was never going to be much more than that. Winter teachers aren't held in the highest of regards by the universities. To them we're just... thinking tinkers. Jokes."
     "Tinkers are important to a lot of people," I said. "And you were important to those children. You helped them grow a bit; gave them something that they'll never lose. A, I think you could be a good teacher."
     She bumped her head back against me. Not entirely gently.
     "Ooof," I said and reached up to scratch behind her ears. "They're not giving you trouble over that? Some class crap?"
     "Hnnn, no. The Mediators don't care; aesh Smither is a lot more approachable than I'd expected from someone of her status; ah Ties is being very... polite around me."
     "I think perhaps he's overcompensating after... you know, after that night."
     She gave a considering humm. "What did you say to him after that?"
     I shrugged. "What I hope was the right thing."
     "You weren't angry with him?"
     I had been angry. And jealous and confused and frightened. "I tried to do what I think a Rris would do. I'm not sure if he understood."
     She laughed. "Now I'm not sure if I'm understanding you."
     "I think..." I started to say, then understood where that sort of conversation could lead. "He's a good man," I said eventually. "I don't know if you think he's attractive, but he's wealthy, influential. I'm pretty sure he's smarter than I am. He's not full of himself and actually knows how to have fun. And he's willing to look past things like... where certain people come from."
     "Or what they look like," she said, then bumped her head back against me again and added, "Provided they'll drink with him."
     "A. That too," I conceded.
     "I thought you were angry with us."
     "I was. That doesn't mean I was right." I said and her ears twitched with my breath. "I can't control how I feel. I can control how I act. It doesn't mean I have to be selfish about it, and to do what I want would be just that. Chihirae, you know I'd never do anything to hurt you. For you to stay with me, I think that would hurt you."
     She was quiet a time. "He was better at biting," she reflected after a time.
     "What?"
     "You can't quite bite my scruff right," she said. "And then you get a mouth full of fur.
     Very undignified. He was good at biting."
     "What? You think I... You're teasing me, aren't you."
     A chitter and she tipped her head back, nipping up at me. "A. But you do have your good points."
     "Oh? How about this?" I asked as I scratched behind her ears.
     "A," she rumbled and leaned into the caress. "I think that's one of them. And there's something else I can think of that we can do. We're not in a carriage or a crowded inn tonight, a?"
     I snorted a laugh. "No, we're not. And that might be a problem. It's below freezing and we're alone in the middle of some old ruins in a snowy forest."
     "So? You can think of a better place?"
     So indeed. I looked around. Under the moon and reeling stars the snow was a pale icing across the world. Half-buried stonework sketched unnaturally geometric mounds in the landscape, like stacks of books under white blankets. Ancient walls and skeletal trees threw velvet purple shadows that eventually blended with the darkness under the woods, black and opaque, that marched away across the hillsides. Campfires were distant fireflies downhill. There was no wind, no birdsong, no insects or voices. The world was absolutely silent and, for a short time at least, we were alone.
     "Several, actually," I said.
     "Hah, we've had fun outside before. There was that time by the lake."
     "That was the middle of summer," I reminded her. "And when you take your clothes off you are still wearing a fur coat."
     "You don't need to strip. I only need a small part of you," she growled and squirmed a little. "You might like it. Your scent says you're interested."
     "A?" I nuzzled down to her tufted ear and she twitched her head. "But I can't bite properly, remember?" I murmured.
     "Hum? Well, perhaps some lessons, a?"
     "More lessons?" I stroked my hands through the thick layered fur of her chest, feeling her breathing, her heartbeat. "We really need those?"
     "A, you think you're that good?"
     "I think you do," I grinned and she growled and then shuddered as I stroked her lower.
     Perhaps they were watching us. It wouldn't have surprised me. But if there were Mediators in the trees, there was no sign of them. And presently they were out of mind. No disturbance; no interruption as we spent our time in the snow. I held her, scratched her in those places that got a reaction; she craned around and nipped at me. I flinched away and we overbalanced and toppled backwards off the old wall into a drift of snow-buried bracken, struggling and sputtering and laughing and cursing.
     We ended against a huge old stone; a toppled monolith from some ancient wall piled with drifted snow. It was cold. She wasn't concerned, but I certainly felt it, so we couldn't take our time. Chihirae leaned back into me as I pressed up against her, tipping her head as I nuzzled her neck. An ear flicked as I breathed on it, scratching my fingers down her ribs under her shirt. She made a sound: a low noise that might have been a growl, or perhaps something else. Then she leaned over the stone, elbows scuffing through the heaped snow. Eyes flashed as she cast a look back over her shoulder. Tongue flickered in and out as she licked her lips and growled, rump raised and her tail flicking aside, inviting in her kinds' way. And I struggled with the button fly with cold and clumsy fingers.
     Thick winter pelt tickled where it brushed against sensitive bare skin. I leaned over her, stroking the soft fur on the side of her head. I noticed details: breath huffing from her partlyopened mouth; her eyes lidded, black pupils; her hands clenching and unclenching against the slab; the snow under her hands had been scuffed from the stone; carvings were visible in the half-light: something Rris and unfathomable and incidental. Freezing air became clutching organic heat. She made a high noise, breathed, "Ahhh! Careful! Slow, please..."
     I was. Slow. Careful. Joining two subtly mismatched components together. She growled again, different this time: sounding small noises and gasps of breath as I stroked at the thick fur on the back of her neck and shoulders, running my fingers through the slightly coarse layers of her winter coat, feeling muscles under silken flesh flexing, a pulse running hot.
     For a while that was everything. Night and starry sky spinning overhead: clouds of ancient galactic light spilled across bottomless ink. Below the glow of the heavens lay the white of snow, the grey of trees, touches of ice cold and body warmth. Surrounded by a grasping heat, both of us breathing faster. Frigid breath gusting into my lungs. She vented little sounds, little still-born growls as she snarled at the air. If anyone had been watching, at that point I didn't care. Hell, I wouldn't have cared if the forest had caught fire and the moon fell from the sky. There was the moment, the movement, and that was everything. I leaned closer, inhaling the dusky scent of her neck, nuzzling.
     "I'm not very good at this," I breathed with my movements, teased her. "I don't know if I should..."
     She arched her back, pushing up at me, "Rot you... Please..."
     I bit the nape of her neck. She tensed then, almost vibrating beneath me, then as if the bite had been the pull of a trigger whatever was winding so tight inside her snapped with a convulsion I felt as muscles flexed, over and over. She made a noise, a vocalization like metal tearing and bit at her own wrist to stifle it. My own groan was muffled by my mouthful of scruff and hair.
     We subsided, tangled together in the disturbed snow on that tumbled slab and panting like a pair of steam engines. I buttoned up and tried to discreetly spit fur out of my mouth. Chihirae cleaned herself. She really was very flexible.
     I worked a last, irritating piece of hair off my tongue and heaved a shuddering sigh. "That was... intense."
     "A. Most invigorating," she said as she settled her kilt, rubbed the nape of her neck and then lazily blinked at me. "Perhaps we should be starting back?"
     "Probably," I said, sitting myself up. The carvings on surface of the stone were rough under my hands. I brushed a bit more snow and ice aside. The block was about the size of a car, with Rris script carved centimeter-deep into the granite. "What does this say?"
     She regarded it. Brushed some more snow aside and cocked her head. "I don't know. It's some old dialect. I don't know it."
     I hadn't considered different scripts. "Wonder if it was important."
     Chihirae waved a shrug. "Possibly 'No copulating here'?" she suggested.
     I laughed. "Well, I won't tell the Mediators if you don't."
     Bound back downhill, slogging across the clearing with its deceptively smooth covering of frozen crusted snow and ice over bracken and undergrowth. I paid some attention to the surroundings, noticed how the only tracks across the powder were our own. In the trees we brushed through bare branches, yelping as showers of dislodged snow went down our necks. Down near the road sentries ducked their heads in acknowledgement and quietly watched as we passed.
     We entered the camp looking disgracefully disheveled and flushed. Faces gathered around the campfire all turned our way as we approached across the trampled snow. Both the Mediators were both there, poker-faced and unperturbed. Rraerch and Chaeitch weren't so successful, with Chaeitch breaking into a tongue-lolling smirk before Rraerch elbowed him. Makepeace did a double take at the other faces around the campfire. She looked puzzled, and then something must've clicked because her ears suddenly pricked right up. She joined the others in staring at us.
     "Hai," Chaeitch broke the spell by brandishing a kebabs. "You're just in time for food," he called, waving the meat-heavy skewer, then smirked and chittered, "Or have you already had a bite?"
     Rraerch shoved a handful of snow into his ear.

I used to know people who claimed they loved the cold. When I remember them I have to wonder if they would be so enthusiastic in the Rris world; when they couldn't just hop back into their heated chalets or cars when it got a bit much; when the days of cold and snow turned into weeks of cold and snow.
     As it did for us.
     The routine continued: Wake in the morning in the coach or a freezing room in an inn or coach house, and then be gone while the sun was still a brightening smudge on the horizon. Days would pass, rattling by across the countryside at little more than walking pace. I'd study, talk, joke and argue with the Rris. The Mediators remained stoic dullards; Chaeitch and Rraerch were good company I could actually converse with; Chihirae kept me sane; Makepeace... well Makepeace was a bottomless well of questions.
     It all helped pass time. Hours and then days passed by like the countryside outside: slowly, steadily. Monotonously.
     Until the inn at Three Birds Fall, that is. That night certainly broke the monotony.

The Rippled Lands were what the Rris called the mountain chain I'd known as the Appalachian Mountains. They weren't the highest in the world: they weren't majestic, snowtopped saw-toothed granite peaks. Instead they were ridges of somewhat mundane-looking hills, rounded with time and weather and ancient ice, heavily forested and receding into the hazy distance. They were the remnants of a geological fender-bender — two continental plates colliding and crumpling under the impact, a vast collision that played out over a time scale of millennia. Those plates crumpled like corrugated iron, only these deformations were measured in hundreds of meters high, countless square miles of them in a broad, serried swathe running right down the eastern seaboard, north to south. The grain of the land — the alignment of the ridges — tended to follow the coastline, wending and curving down the seaboard in a roughly south-west curve. Travelling with the grain would be difficult; cutting across it, across a hundred kilometers of steep, wooded wilderness, would be nigh on impossible.
     The pass named the Open Wound was a gateway through the Rippled lands and really the only practical way for animal-drawn vehicles to cross. The Ashansi river we'd been following was what might have been the Susquehanna back home. Like a lot of the more recent geological aspects of this world the river was in a similar place, but it didn't quite match up with any maps I had. This river had carved the Open Wound through the mountains, wearing a path across the grain of the land. While the ridges and hills tended to align in a roughly west south-westerly direction, the river had worn sequential notches through the ridges from north to south, cutting a twisting and wending river valley through low spots below the forested peaks. The Ashansi Trail followed that river into the ranges, and the road followed the trail.
     Why not take a boat? The river was broad and quite shallow and often enough there were rapids. Not the raging white water sort, but enough to make the upper reaches of the river unnavigable by large vessels.
     Sometimes the valley floor was a broad, gentle bowl, wide enough for farmsteads and small villages. Other times it narrowed enough so there was only room for the river: the road clinging to ledges and cuttings hewn through hills and cliff faces alongside. It wasn't a pleasant feeling to look out the carriage window on an icy road down a sheer drop to where floes of ice bumped and jostled their way downstream. Above the road were hillsides dense with trees: firs and pines and spruce and birch; bare and frosted in the snow and mist. Low cloud hid the sky, bumped against the higher hilltops, damped the sun and turned the world to bleak monotones that didn't really do anything for anyone's mood.
     So when we rattled to an unexpected halt one morning and voices rose from the front of the column it was actually something of interest.
     "What's that?" I asked, leaning toward the window to try and see what was going on. There was a wooden fence outside. Beyond that a small field occupied by some gently steaming bison watching us. A rickety barn painted a rather bright blue and something that might have been a shed.
     Rohinia looked out. "Wait here," he said, and hopped out, inconspicuously adjusting one of his pistols in its bandoleer.
     I looked at Chaeitch and Chihirae, my company for the day. Their ears were pricked and they also looked out the window, but they didn't seem concerned. "Some sort of delay," Chaeitch said.
     Rohinia was back five minutes later. He looked... not worried but rather thoughtful. He knocked snow off his legs as he told us, "We have to detour. Villagers say there's been a slip ahead. Entire hillside came down and the river road is blocked. Bad enough that it'll take days to clear and repair the road enough to get the coaches through. The outriders concur. So we're taking the old saddle road. It's longer, slower and steeper, but faster than waiting for the road to open."
     "It's a problem?" Chaeitch asked him. "Trouble?"
     "Not so much. There's been heavy snow and cold weather. One fallen tree can bring the lot down. Not uncommon according to the villagers. The detour will add a day, but they say there's an inn halfway, at Three Birds Fall, that we can make before nightfall. It does fair business in winter due to things like this."
     He leaned back, scratching his chin with a clawtip and then looking at Chaeitch. "You've been this way before. You know it?"
     "A, been this way before. Twice. And there were problems: We had a ferry delayed for repairs and a road over in Bluebetter washed out by a storm. But this this part of the road was fine. I don't know this inn, but it doesn't seem like such a suspicious inconvenience."
     Rohinia considered. "Three Birds Fall it is then."
     The detour took us away from the river, up a smaller spur valley. We spent most of the day following winding valley roads through winter forests, under white hills and grey clouds which didn't change much as the day went on. As far as distractions went, the diversion wasn't that diverting. The carriages rattled on. It snowed for a while, then the grey overcast lifted and gradually tore apart into tatters of clouds. It was close to evening, as the shadows crept across the snow, when we arrived.
     The inn at Three Birds Fall was there. The road left the forest and crested a hill and the inn was there. It was really all that was there: a clearing, a few snow-covered fields with a sprinkling of icy bison around a sprawling wooden building and that was it. It was bigger than I'd expected; three stories; one of those rambling places that'd obviously grown over time. Some of it was stone, especially the older-central parts. Where it was wood the cladding was mostly a tar-black jigsaw of different tones and textures where it'd been added onto and repaired through the years. There was a main building with three floors and spreading wings containing outlying rooms, a stables and a smithy. The roofs stepping down from the main building were steep and dark, covered with split wooden tiles and loaded with strata of snow. Amongst the cold white landscape and lengthening purple shadows of a setting sun, it looked like a raven crouched spread-winged in a snowdrift.
     We drew up out front, where scouts were waiting and where the snow had already been trampled by feet coming and going. Guards spread out, some heading to the stables where a few elk were visible. The rest of the caravan headed to a field to set up their own camp. I stepped down from the carriage and looked up at the front of the inn, at a wide sign painted across the front of the inn depicting three birds on a branch.
     The front door was old. Really old. The thick wooden planks were greyish and warped and worn down to a glossy polished finish where hands had rubbed them. Rohinia opened it and led the way inside. I followed, ducking under a dangerously low lintel into a big, dim, smoky room. It was a rough place, made for careless traffic and hard use. Wooden beams crisscrossed the ceiling, hung with knickknacks: small painted bits of wood, various stuffed small animals and birds, several sets of antlers, dried herbs and plants, small black-iron tools and implements, loops of rope, dusty bottles of many colors, all dangling where I could bang my head if I wasn't careful. Fresh straw rustled under my feet, covering worn old flagstones. There were trestle tables and benches, built from thick wood as worn and as old and as hard as the door had been. Down at the far end was an area that served as a kitchen, with cupboards and shelves and a stone bench and a fireplace the size of a bus stop. Strung from the ceiling in front of the fireplace was a skinned deer carcass. A Rris busy with a knife looked around as we entered.
     They all did. There were half a dozen of them in there: sitting at the tables, eating, drinking, smoking and they all paused in whatever they were doing and turned to see who'd come in. When they saw me they froze, motionless. A Rris, skinny and much-scarred, wearing a stained canvas apron hurried over toward us and stopped just short of the guards.
     "Constable?" the Rris said to Rohinia, but the eyes were locked on me. "We were told to expect important guests, so we welcome you, but what is... this?"
     "Your important guest," Rohinia growled. "You are the proprietor?"
     "Aesh Che'esa, constable," the Rris said, still staring at me. Then she ducked her head, "Apologies, sir. There are rooms. We've just slaughtered some game so there's food," she gestured to the stripped carcass hanging by the fire. Raw flesh glistened in the light. "If you are hungry... ?"
     "A. Thank you," I said. The Rris ducked her head and hurried off back to the kitchen. I stared after her, a little puzzled.
     Someone nudged me. I looked down at Chihirae's amused face. "You've met worse," she said.
     "A," I said. "I know."

They gave Chihirae and myself the best room in the place. It was up on the third floor, huddled up under the roof. It was a decent room. It was clean, with whitewashed plaster walls. No carpet, but the floor was covered in a mosaic of brightly colored rugs. There was glass in the window, a simple low table with an oil lamp with new wick and a couple of leather cushions, worn shiny with use. The bed wasn't big, but it was enough for us. It was against the far wall, up against a chimney flue passing through the room on its way up to the roof. The heat rising up through that from fires below warmed the stones a bit, enough to provide a bit of warmth on a night that was cold enough to freeze chamber pots solid.
     It was warmer in the main room downstairs. A crowd of Rris bodies and the cooking fires warmed the place, although the fug produced by mingled scents of industrial-scale cuisine and wet fur could've been cut and packaged. A minstrel had drifted in with the night: a ragged-looking individual dressed in worn leathers and threadbare road cloak with a tatty little pack and a more expensive-looking instrument case. The proprietor hadn't been happy about it, but under protests from our party had eventually relented and let the minstrel ply his trade by the fire in exchange for a meal and place to sleep. His instrument was something like a lute but played with a little bow that drew notes like fingers stroking around the rims crystal glasses. He was pretty good with it, but the accompanying Rris singing still sounded like rusty nails being pulled to my ears. He kept stealing glances in my direction. I noticed the Mediators kept their eyes on him.
     I sat with the others at a table, listening to the music. They were... ballads? Something about an old battle where everyone died, a plague, a broken merchant. Cheerful stuff. Over in the kitchen the cook rummaged through cupboards, looking for pots and pans. We listened, we talked. Chihirae tried to translate the musician's lyrics for me. Chaeitch and Rraerch discussed how much time we'd lost, how the delay might affect things further along the track. The Mediators had their own private discussion going. Makepeace shoveled food away as if someone was going to take it away at any second. Huh, student.
     The fare was basic, but there was plenty of it. As usual the meat was underdone and there weren't enough vegetables. Our own cook intervened and there were heated words exchanged with the inn staff before they backed down and I got a bowl of overcooked stew and potatoes and a small loaf of rock-like bread. Or a bread-like rock, it was difficult to tell. We ate.
     A small crowd of our guards and carters were gathered around the minstrel while he played songs and told stories and news. We sat nearby, listening and drinking wine. With the fire and number of bodies in there the room had grown hot, smoky. That atmosphere and the tension that close Rris crowds tends to give me were conspiring to give me the beginnings of a headache and some growing queasiness, so I begged off the drinking for the evening to retire early.
     Of course the bed was freezing. I buried myself under layers of quilts and tried to get some sleep. I dozed, kept dipping into confused, disjointed half-dreams that kept me teetering on the edge, but never quite dropping off. At some point I was aware of a furry body bundling into bed, clambering over me and collapsing in a heavy lump across my legs. It got too hot, and then when I kicked the coverings off it was too cold.
     And the shivering and sweating and queasiness got worse, to the point of sudden cramps that finally got too much. I barely made it to the chamber pot. Mercifully, it was empty, or that might've made things worse. As it was, I almost filled it, kneeling and puking until I was just dry heaving. I spat, then knelt on the rugs by the chipped porcelain bowl, eyes closed and head down on crossed arms and feeling like I'd just been wrung out. My mouth tasted foul. Freezing sweat prickled against my skin as I heaved panting breaths, each one a brief cloud visible in the trapezoid of moonlight peeking in through the window.
     The purge helped. The cramps had eased, as had the shivers. I still knelt there, breathing hard, not wanting to move lest it bring on another bout. But the nausea had settled. After a while I pushed myself upright and was surprised to find I was feeling considerably better. I sat, leaning back against the cracked plaster wall beneath the window.
     "Uh, that was unpleasant," I muttered.
     Silence. Pure, crystalline silence.
     The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I'd just been noisily sick. And there'd been... no reaction. Chihirae hadn't stirred. Nobody was knocking on the door; no questioning voices outside. It was quiet. Utterly silent. Frost scrawled across the small window panes, glowing in the moonlight. There should have been Mediators or guards barging in to see what the commotion was. Instead... nothing. And the bed was a motionless pile of bedclothes. A furry hand limply dangled from the sheets.
     "Chihirae?"
     I scrambled to my feet, clutched the windowsill to steady myself, and then lurched over to the bed. She was warm. She was breathing. I caught her jaw and turned her head toward me: her tongue lolled from her mouth, a thread of reflected light glimmered beneath an eyelid, but otherwise she didn't respond. I stroked the side of her face. "Chihirae! Hey!"
     An eyelid flickered. She made a small noise. I stroked her cheek.
     Was she sick as well? Was it something we ate? Something given... to... us.
     There was that prickling feeling at the back of my neck again and suddenly something... a whole bunch of little somethings added up to a big wrongness. And I felt as if the bottom had dropped out of the world. I stared at the flimsy wooden door as my heart started thumping, sweat prickled. Poison. We'd been poisoned. Which meant...
     I looked at Chihirae laying helpless, then grabbed my boots, hurriedly pulling them on. My coat was bundled on the table. I shrugged into it, buttoning the overlapping lapels up the front. Then I hooked my fingers through the straps in the inside cuffs of the sleeves. They weren't usual in an article of clothing, but then neither were some of the other extras Chaeitch had added to that coat.
     I slipped my hands through the straps: they'd stop the sleeves riding up and incidentally held the padded steel plates in place over my knuckles. Then I unbuckled the concealed breast pockets, reaching into the left one, feeling the cold clamminess of oiled leather around my hand and then the smooth rounded curl of a wooden grip.
     It wasn't one of the clumsy pieces of gray-black ironmongery I'd had back in Open Fields. Chaeitch had worked some refinements. The revolver gleamed white in the moonlight. It wasn't a big gun, more like a .32 with a snub barrel, handy for tucking away out of sight. Not something people would look for in a place where effective handguns were almost half the size of a baseball bat. The ammunition was brass rim-fired shells: reliable, self-contained, compact, and light years from the clunky shot and powder the Rris predominately dealt with. I sat on the edge of the bed as I carefully swung the cylinder open and fed the shells into their chambers, one at a time. It closed again with a smooth, metallic click. I dropped another couple of reloads into my pocket.
     The door was still closed. There wasn't a sound from beyond it. On the bed beside me Chihirae groaned and shifted, an eyelid flickered up for a moment to show a white-membrane half covering her eye, then she sagged back, drooling. I stroked her cheek again. "I have to check on the others," I said. "I'll be back. Promise."
     She slurred something.
     "Promise."
     I scooped up my flashlight on my way past the table; I'd already had experience with how dark the narrow stairs were and didn't need to break my neck. In front of the door I stopped, adjusted my sweaty grip on the pistol. Then I looked back at the bed and swallowed. I didn't want to leave her. I didn't want to go out there, but something was wrong, very wrong. Chaeitch and Rraerch were in a room next door, Makepeace in another. They were just across the landing. It was only a few steps to find out just what was going on.
     The iron latch clicked quietly. A bit of moonlight from the window slipped past me onto the landing as the door swung open. It just lit a wedge with a will-o-the wisp glow, enough to turn the rest of the landing into blackness. There wasn't much out there, just a narrow attic corridor with three doors opening off it and the steep, doglegged stairs diagonally opposite. I took a couple of steps into the darkness, then flicked the flashlight on, played it around the landing. White plaster flared back at me in the brilliant blue-white circle of light, black floorboards polished smooth by the passage of countless feet glistened, the other doors were all closed. I took a step toward the nearest and there was a noise, a clink of metal, from the stairs. I swung the torch around.
     And froze in shock.
     Rris were on the stairs, also frozen, snarling, hands up to block the sudden light. More than a few of them filling the stairs down to the next landing, pairs of eyes glowing like burnished coins in reflected light. Some of them... I thought I recognized the innkeeper, the cook. They were in what was unmistakably armor of some kind, with dark breastplates and arm guards under dark grey and green cloaks. I also recognized the weapons: guns, gleaming blades in their hands.
     I screamed something. I'm not sure it was intelligible in any language, I just screamed and jumped back. Rris yowled. "It's awake!" someone yelled. A Rris raised a gun. I saw the barrel, I saw the flint spark and then the weapon vanished behind a blast of flame and a terrific noise that felt like someone slamming my head in a door. Something belted me across chest and I staggered back into the wall. The landing filled with swirling gunsmoke that just reflected the madly waving light of my flashlight back at me. Fireflies of burning wadding swirled through the confusion.
     "Get her!" a voice yowled through the smoke and the ringing in my ears. I raised my own gun, remembered to cock the hammer and fired back at the stairs. Fired again and again with thunderflashes of light and noise that physically slapped my ears. There were howls, sounds of pain.
     "Repeater!" came a scream from the stairs, muffled through the ringing in my ears.
     "Get it! Get in there."
     I scrambled back to the door. Something moved over by the stairs and I fired at it. A snarling groan and a gunshot came back. I involuntarily ducked, dropping the flashlight. Shadows spun crazily as it skittered across the floor to glare back from a corner. Plaster showered from a new hole in the wall. There were voices through the dust and smoke, ordered commands being snapped. I fired another shot and then ducked behind the door jamb while and screamed, "Wake up! Goddamit! Wake up. Attack! We're under attack!"
     Chihirae was stirring weakly, kicking at the sheets.
     I heard a voice on the stairs snarling, "Go!"
     I fired the last shot from the pistol, adding to the swirling banks of opaque smoke, then ducked back behind the door jamb and hurriedly pulled a loader pack from my pockets. From somewhere behind my reflexes I was surprised to note my hands were steady as I swung the cylinder open, shook the expended shells out, rammed the loader pack in and snapped it closed again.
     Rris voices yowled. A couple of shots pocked through the wall over my head, high up. I stuck my gun around the door again and Rris burst from the smoke, blades and teeth horribly gleaming in the harsh torchlight. I fired. A Rris' muzzle yanked aside and it tumbled, clattering in an uncontrolled heap. Cocked and fired again and another one staggered. Again and again as fast as I could and another went down. Another crashed into the wall and sprawled and another was behind that one. I fired and the hammer just clicked. The Rris yowled, ears flat and eyes pure black, hurdling its fallen associates in a headlong charge and I cocked the gun again and fired and the gun barked and the last round took the Rris in the open mouth. The body tumbled like a puppet with its strings cut, limply sprawling across the floor.
     I remember the smoke. It was fascinating: grey banks of the stuff filling the narrow hallway. The harsh light of the flashlight penetrated a short way, but mostly reflected from the swirling pall in a white glare. Tendrils drifting and curling in disturbed air cast shadows back on other banks, striping the air itself in writhing shadows.
     It seemed to burst from within as more Rris charged forward.
     A Rris trailing streamers of murk burst from the opaque smog, toe claws digging into fallen bodies as it came at me with a long knife in one hand. It swung and I wildly blocked it with my left arm. The blade skidded away with a rasp of steel on steel and the Rris looked startled. I didn't give it time to recover, stepped forward, meeting it and not allowing room to dodge as I punched it in the head with my other hand and it staggered to its knees. Another rushed in, swinging a spiked bar and that hit my other arm hard enough to make me feel it. I dropped the gun and swung, too slowly. The Rris dodged and tried to bring the mace back for another swing but hit the wall. I bulled in and grabbed that arm, my fist closing around the alien wrist and holding. The Rris snarled, then yowled as I twisted viciously, wrenching its arm around. It dropped the mace and had to turn with it or dislocate the arm. It snarled, ears flat and tried to twist away. The first was staggering to his feet and I kicked out hard, sending the feline flying back into the smoke in the general direction of the stairs. The one in my grasp snapped furiously and tried to squirm around. That snarl turned to an outright yowl when I bodily hoisted the Rris and threw it after the other. There were shrieks and clattering of metal like a sack filled with frying pans and cats falling down the stairs.
     I scrambled after the pistol, trying to find it in the murk. It'd skittered over by the wall. It was wet when I picked it up, greasy and slimy. I fumbled with it before I was able to break it open, shaking the spent and dud rounds out and letting them chime against the floor. Acrid smoke burned my throat as I took deep breaths, trying to steady my hands as I reloaded most of the last of my ammo. It snapped shut with a metallic finality and I stood there on the landing, gun held in both hands and aimed at the stairs, waiting for movement, my ears ringing.
     Gunshots boomed from downstairs, flashing through the smoke like lighting in distant clouds. I ducked frantically and fragments and plaster spalled down from the roof. Rris yowled and screamed incoherent noises in the confusing banks of swirling gray smoke that reflected the glaring torchlight, stung my eyes and set me coughing. Sounds of fighting spilled up from downstairs, metal clashing on metal, Rris shrieking.
     I crouched amongst the sprawled bodies with my heart hammering and the gun trained on the stairs. Sounds of fighting continued. There was someone putting up a fight down there. And they'd probably need help. I glanced back at the door to the room Chihirae was in. I didn't want to leave her and — dammit — I was just plain scared, but I couldn't just wait for our assailants to finish off the resistance and come for us next.
     I swore quietly and forced myself to stand. I didn't want to go down there; I really didn't. But there was fighting which meant my friends could be in trouble. Were in trouble. I didn't have a choice.
     Underfoot the floorboards were horribly wet and sticky. Something was dripping down the steps. There were bodies down there, sprawled down the stairwell and across the next landing, limbs tangled and contorted. There was a low groan, trailing off into a wet whispering sound. I stared, breathing hard, blood pounding, not quite believing what was going on.
     Sounds continued from the floor below. Clashing metal, Rris cries and snarls: a catfight amplified through a stadium sound system. Further away, from outside, I could hear more gunshots. Crackling fusillades of them. Were those our guards firing? It sounded like a small war was going on. I picked my way down the dark stairwell only a little wider than my shoulders, trying to get past tumbled bodies that'd finished in positions that I bizarrely remember thinking looked uncomfortable. It was dark and I momentarily considered going back for the flashlight that I'd left on the floor upstairs, but there was flickering light visible from the next floor down. I stepped down on something metallic and sharp, cursed and stopped at the corner.
     The corridor was a confusion of motion and noise. Swirling knots of smoke writhed around in the dim light of a couple of wall lamps, turning the vicious fight into a surreal knot of blurring blades and ringing metal. From what I could make out in the chaotic gloom it was two against... many.
     The backlit silhouettes of two Rris with long knives standing side by side against at least six in scraggly clothes over armor like intruders upstairs had been wearing. The pair had their backs to me, fighting in nothing but their fur as they tried to hold their assailants at bay. The width of the hall was a bottleneck to their advantage, but the others were pressing them hard, swords gleaming and flashing and they were steadily falling back. Blood seeping from cuts and gashes glistened in their fur, but the hallway beyond was strewn with blood and bodies showing the path of their retreat: each step back they'd taken had been sold dearly.
     In the long second that ground by as I stood there one of the defenders grunted and staggered back another step, arm dripping blood. Jenes'ahn. Snarling defiance, muzzle twisted and drawn back to bare teeth. Beyond her an attacker's mouth was open in a triumphant snarl, whites visible around the rims of the eyes as the sword came around again and sparks flared as Rohinia's blade was there, deflecting the thrust in a blur of movement and then frantically spinning to meet another attacker. Jenes'ahn staggered and went to her knees. I could see her eyes were glazed, those white membranes half drawn across them. And further back in their assailant's ranks I saw the movement as a Rris there tried to level a bulky musket at the beleaguered Mediators.
     My heart thumped. Chest tightening. Ringing in my ears drowning the clash of battle. It felt like someone else was in the driver's seat, moving my limbs as I shoved forward through the cloying smoke. The Mediators' assailants saw me as I moved forward, I could see their faces, the almost-comically horrified expressions melting through the aggressive snarls. And the front row recoiled even as I barged Rohinia aside, raising my own pistol as the muzzle of the musket veered toward me. I shot that Rris first, the musket suddenly wavering and discharging with its own ear-stabbing retort and billow of smoke to add to the murk in the hall. It didn't matter; the corridor was narrow and I hardly needed to aim as I emptied my own pistol into the crowd of armored Rris.
     It wasn't a high-powered weapon by modern handgun standards, but it fired a pretty hefty slug with more of a punch than a smoothbore flintlock. I aimed, fired, cocked, aimed, fired... Again and again, each shot a flash of fire and smoke and a concussion that spiked my ears. Four, five of them went down, some rounds penetrating to hit those in the back ranks as well. Another pistol went off back there with a retort I felt, spewing smoke and sparks, the heavy slug thudding into the ceiling and adding splintered wood to the air. Rris fell or recoiled frantically and the assault turned from a skirmish line into a mob and Rohinia lunged forward again in a blink of movement and his hands moved like that and the knife flashed and crippled bodies fell. I felt more than heard the pistol click on empty and one of the survivors burst through the roiling gunsmoke haze with white-rimmed eyes above a gaping snarl, a long, curved blade raised. Someone yelled my name; a warning.
     A razor tip struck my torso, just over my right ribs, sliced through the leather of my coat. And skidded off.
     The lunge had overbalanced the Rris. He tried to recover, but there was an opening, just for an instant. I lost the pistol and grabbed the closest sword hand, yanked. He tried to gouge at me with claws. The coat took that and I caught his throat with the other hand, swung him around and rammed him into the wall hard enough to break through the plaster and lathe and knock the breath out of him. Then I just grabbed under his armor and lifted, bounced his head off the ceiling. The rafters didn't give way, but something else did. He stopped kicking. Another dodged around the snarling melee that Rohinia was embroiled in and came at me with jaws gaping and knife ready. I threw the dead weight of the motionless Rris I was holding. The tangle of limbs and tails staggered back and that was long enough for me to get in close and throw a punch. That missed as the attacker dodged and a knife slashed back in return and I managed to block that with a wild swing of my arm, batting it aside. Something shoved me hard in the back, pushing me forward and in turn I shoved the Rris in front of me back into the wall and my next punch was a solid jab across the muzzle, driving it back with a crack and my next one got it in the side of the head. The body bounced off the wall once more before it hit the floor hard. I turned to see the last Rris was just behind me, trying to grab at the knife imbedded in its neck. There was... blood spraying. Horribly, everywhere. Across my face and the wall for what seemed like an age until that one finally fell. Jenes'ahn stood beyond, swaying and staring at me with eyes half-occluded by those white membranes.
     "Thanks," I panted, my voice sounding fuzzy through the ringing in my ears.
     Jenes'ahn just collapsed, folding down into the blood smeared across the floorboards. Rohinia was at her side before I could move. "Stay back," he snapped at me when I went to help. His eyes were wide, also dull behind that translucent covering. He looked gory and groggy and mad. I stopped in my tracks, then stepped back, feeling like a whipped dog as I watched him tearing strips off a cloak.
     There were still shouts from outside. An occasional gunshot. The pistol was where I'd dropped it. While Rohinia tore bandages I scooped it up, tried to wipe it off. Rohinia looked around when I scattered the brass on the floor and reloaded with my last two rounds. As I closed the gun I caught a glimpse of movement down the hall.
     A Rris had crept from one of the doors. Someone I didn't know standing frozen, clutching a tattered knapsack to his chest and staring at me and the gun I had leveled and cocked with flat ears and eyes gone to pure black.
     "No! Mikah!" Rohinia snapped again through the whining in my ears. "Don't."
     "What? Who is he?"
     "The musician," Rohinia snarled.
     I remembered that Rris from earlier, playing that instrument down in the hall. He'd come in late. "He's not with them?"
     "No."
     "Oh," I said; lowered the pistol. "Oh."
     The wide-eyed, scruffy little Rris shifted a bit, then frantically scrambled back into the room he'd emerged from. I stared after him numbly for a few seconds and then turned back to the Mediators. Rohinia was ignoring me, focusing on tending to Jenes'ahn amongst the bodies littering the corridor. Furry bodies and blood strewn left and right, empty eyes staring beyond anything I could see. More concentrated death than I'd ever seen before. Death I'd caused. I took a deep breath to try and calm a bit and choked on gunsmoke, on oil fumes and blood and shit and ammonia stink.
     My legs suddenly just gave out. I leaned hard against the wall, slid down to sit on the bloody floor. Just as a squad of our guards clattered into the hall with weapons drawn and drew up short at the sight. I was too busy shaking, trying to breathe through the growing ache across my chest and not throw up to pay them much notice.

The atmosphere in the hall was tense, jittery.
     A fire was blazing in the fireplace, sending sparks dancing up the chimney. Oil lamps set unsteady shadows wavering. The reek of gunpowder, of fear and metal and blood was everywhere. Rris bustled around, guards and staff tending to their injured. They were quiet and disciplined, but even I could tell they were on edge.
     I sat with the others down by the fire, away from the main door. Makepeace was out of it, laying semi-conscious on a mat by the fire. Chaeitch and Rraerch weren't as bad, but they were still quiet, woozy, sitting and swaying slightly from the lingering aftereffects of whatever it was we'd been dosed with. They sat swapping a jug of water back and forth, ears laid flat. I'd come out of it... in one piece. The coat had done what it was designed to do and stopped the bullet, but it'd been like having a two-by-four broken over my chest. And the bruise that was coming up reminded me of that. No ribs broken, thankfully, but it was going to be stiff and painful for a few days. And my ears were still ringing after the indoor gunfire. That was something they never mentioned in the movies: all those action heroes would be stone-deaf.
     Chihirae was beside me, huddling close in the heat from the hearth. She was more than a little shaken by the events of that night and when someone down the other end of the room dropped a pot with a resounding clatter she trembled.
     "It's okay. It's nothing," I said, putting an arm around her shoulder. Her muscles were twitching like an electric current was running through them.
     "Oh, rot," she mumbled.
     "How're you feeling?"
     "Like I'm going to vomit," she said.
     I knew the feeling. "Water?" I offered. "It'll help." She waved an affirmative and I helped her sip from my water bottle.
     "Mikah? What h'ppn? How?"
     "Wish I knew," I said, looking over at the Mediators who were laid out in their own corner. Neither of them looked so good, especially Jenes'ahn. She was still sleeping. Her bandages were pink in places, but that was nothing to the gore that was smeared and matted through her fur. Guards were down the far end of the room, their commander giving orders.
     "I'm going to ask some questions," I said. "See if they know a bit more. You'll be alright?"
     She twitched again. Clawed fingers tensed on my leg, pinpricks starting to dig in, then the pressure lessened and she removed her hand. "A," she said. "A."
     I stood, wincing as bruises made themselves felt, giving her shoulder a final stroke. She looked up at me, then lowered her head again and rubbed at her face. I went to ask some questions.
     The Guard commander was talking with a pair of his subordinates, his helmet tucked under one arm. His fur was spattered and matted with dark mess and there were lines scored across the leather of his cuirass. As I approached the Rris he was speaking with looked my way and reacted. He also turned, flinched a bit and then dismissed the two.
     "Sir," he addressed me. He looked tired. His tail was dragging. "You are all right?"
     "I'm okay. I'm all right," I assured him and gestured back at the others. "They're still not so good."
     "They should be," he said.
     "It's not poison?"
     "They wanted you alive. They wouldn't have used anything dangerous."
     Idiots. A lot of Rris medication and even spices didn't have the same effect on me as it did on them. Whatever they'd used had made me ill, but it could just as easily have been something lethal. "Why did they do it?" I asked.
     He snorted. "They were here for just that purpose."
     "What?"
     "An ambush," he said. "We found the real staff. Out the back. Under the eaves, under the snow. Knives, [something]. Clean. Professional work. They didn't stand a chance."
     "Oh," I said. After that night things weren't quite sinking in. "They killed... everyone here. Just to..."
     "To get you, a," he finished bluntly.
     That hit me in the guts. I sat down on a table, heavily, wincing as the bruise across my chest made itself felt. "Crap. Oh, fuck."
     "Sir?" the commander's ears went back.
     "Who the fuck were they?"
     He cocked his head. "I can't really say. The ones outside fled when they realized their friends had failed to grab you. All the ones inside are dead. Makes it difficult to ask questions."
     "They weren't just bandits, were they?"
     "Not. They were patient. They had information, good equipment and armor. This was a planned ambush. They blocked the road, made sure we came this way. They killed the locals and waited for us." His breath gusted as he snorted and looked around the room, back at the semiconscious Rris. "Huhn."
     "But... ?" I prompted.
     "But," he growled, "Overly risky: too complicated and smells of something an amateur would conceive of. But they weren't amateurs. They almost did it. If you hadn't woken..." he trailed off with a grimace.
     "How many... ?" I ventured.
     "They killed the inside guards," he said levelly. "Four guards and three attendants slaughtered in their sleep. Guards on duty outside hadn't eaten or drunk food they prepared, so they were alert. They still lost three."
     "Ten?!" I couldn't believe it. "Ten in one night?"
     "A," was all he said.
     I shook my head at that. Ten of our people drugged and murdered in their sleep. "And how many of them were there?"
     "Difficult to be sure, sir. Upstairs they lost a dozen. Five more outside. They had more in the woods, but they didn't press, so I suspect we outnumber them. But we can't keep taking loses like that."
     "Guards are out now, a?" I asked and looked up at him when his tail lashed.
     "Yes, sir. Triple duty, sir," he growled.
     "Yeah," I sighed. "Right. I won't tell you your job."
     "Thank you, sir," he said gruffly.
     "You don't think they've given up?"
     "I can't say for certain," he hissed and considered for a few seconds. "They proved they're serious, perhaps foolhardy and there are still a good number of them, so if they are also very determined... I would urge caution and preparedness."
     "Suggestions then?"
     "We stay here tonight," he said. "You and the others stay inside, down here where we can watch you. At first light we leave and we ride hard for the next big town."
     "They'll be all right for that?" I nodded toward the groggy Rris at the other end of the hall.
     "I'd prefer to leave now," he said. "But they need the time. They seem to be recovering, so I think they'll live. We'll move your luggage down. We'll find some good food for you. You just have to be ready to move quickly come sun-up, a?"
     "Fine," I said.
     His ears flicked and he took one step away, and then paused. I looked and just saw his armored back, but his tail lashed once. "And... Sir?" he said without turning.
     "A?"
     "The Mediators... they are arrogant. I agree with you there. But they are also very good at what they do. I would listen to their advice. It could be better for all."
     I felt my jaw clench at that thinly veiled poke, but I gritted my teeth and just said, "Thank you, commander."
     He started to turn away and I asked. "What about that one?" I jerked my thumb down to the end of the hall where the musician was huddled, trying to look small. A couple of guards were lurking nearby.
     "Him?" He snorted and his tail lashed once more. "Harmless," he said, then strode off to deal with his troops. I released a hissing breath, then returned to the fire.
     Chihirae was slumped with Chaeitch beside her. He looked up as I crouched down beside them. "She's going to be fine," he said to me. "Just resting."
     "But she's still sick?"
     He waggled a hand. "Not as bad. Seemed to hit some harder than others." He gestured at Makepeace, "She's still deep down, so it might be dosage: the ones that ate more got a bigger hit. You're fortunate whatever that was didn't put you under." He thought about that. "Rot, we all are."
     "Huhn," Chihirae grunted and cracked an eye. "Lucky they didn't kill him."
     "Hey, how're you feeling?" I asked her.
     "Thirsty. Biting headache," she growled, rubbing at her muzzle then blinked at me. "Like Westwater for you, a?"
     It took me a moment to get that and Chaeitch looked confused. "Medicine for Rris doesn't always affect me in the same way," I explained, passing her the water bottle again.
     "Hah, like the infamous Palace reception," he said and caught Chihirae's equally questioning expression as she sipped. "The wrong dinner sauce almost caused a war. I'll tell you someday."
     Chihirae grimaced. "If it were anyone else I'd never believe you. So, Mikah, did you learn anything? Do they know what happened?"
     I shrugged. "About as much as we do. But we make it to the next town and we should be alright."
     Chihirae's ears went back. "Who were they? Will they try again?" I hesitated. "Don't know who they were. We hurt them pretty bad tonight, but they also hurt us and they seem determined. They might try again." Probably would, I thought.
     "A," Chaeitch agreed, then scratched at his cheek and added, "but, what to what end? Taking you? I can't see how they hope to get anything out of that. Taking you through violence and then expecting you to help them, do they really think that's going to happen?"
     I shook my head, but I couldn't help but recalling what my attackers had yelled in that frantic skirmish on the dark stairs. "Take her!" they'd been howling. 'Her'. I remembered that most vividly. I deliberately didn't look at Chihirae.

Dawn opened on a bitterly cold winter morning. The sky was arctic-blue jig sawed with clouds blushing almost-metallic shades of scarlet and gold. High snow on the hills glowed tangerine in the early light. I squinted into the dawn, feeling my skin pricking in the early chill as our guards hurried us around to the stable yard where the carriages were waiting. Chaeitch and I were bundled into one and a second later both the Mediators climbed in after us, Jenes'ahn carrying both her bandaged arm in a sling and a markedly foul temper. Armed guards were everywhere, looking as alert as any guard would after an incident like that.
     We didn't have time to clean up, not completely. The bodies had been moved out back somewhere. I didn't ask for details. The cold weather would keep them until... until someone could be sent back. If other travelers stopped by the inn before then they would be in for a nasty surprise. And probably loot the place, but again that was something we didn't have the time to concern ourselves with.
     The doors shut and we lurched into motion. I noticed the slatted wooden shutters had been installed over the windows, making it harder to see out. And in.
     "And hopefully they won't know which carriage he's in," Chaeitch observed.
     "Hopefully," Rohinia said. "Now, perhaps we can have a little talk about last night."
     "Suits me," I said and before they could start asked, "How did they know we were here?"
     Jenes'ahn glared. "After what you did at Long Way you really have to ask that?"
     "Long Way was four... five nights ago," I said. "The ones who attacked us: there were a lot of them, they were well armed, armored, professional. They were waiting for us. You are saying that a message went out from Long Way, found this group, then they raced to intercept us, through snow and ice, in five days? Come on. They were waiting for us. They must've known we would be coming this way. They knew before we left Shattered Water."
     The Rris all stared at me.
     "Am I wrong?" I demanded. "You can't just... phone someone, can you. You have to send a messenger, wait for them to respond. It all takes a time. This group must've been preparing for... I don't know... Weeks? Months? They were told about us before we left."
     Both Mediators were motionless, utterly expressionless. Chaeitch looked from them to me and back again, his own ears twitching wildly. After a few seconds Rohinia abruptly relaxed, blinking lazily as he sat back and waved a shrug. "That would seem likely, wouldn't it."
     I shook my head. "And is all this tied in to this trip? Is it something to do with the timing? The sudden urgency?" I looked at Chaeitch. "Is it just a straightforward business trip?"
     "I thought it was," he said. "Dealing with some odd issues, granted, but there was no talk of threats or the like."
     I settled back in the seat, watching the Mediators carefully. "Nothing to do with the Guild? No... unfinished business?"
     Jenes'ahn stiffened a bit but Rohinia didn't twitch a muscle. "No. They weren't anything to do with the Guild. Mercenary most likely."
     "The Guild wouldn't use them?"
     His amber eyes didn't flicker. "Why? Guild members are a good deal more effective. I see they managed to shoot you though."
     I looked down. The bullet hole in the breast of the coat was quite visible against the white leather. "Yeah. I got better."
     Creases appeared on his muzzle. "I thought that coat seemed a little heavy. Winter coat, a? Ah Ties, you might have had something to do with it? [Something] mail? No, it stopped a musket ball."
     Chaeitch brushed at the fur of one forearm and looked uncertain. "It's... leaf plates," he said.
     "Just that? Or did Mikah have some suggestions?"
     "Yeah," I said, so he didn't have to. "The guns, the armor... I asked him to make them."
     "Why?"
     I hesitated, stopped by the sheer bluntness of the question. "Ummm, what happened last night... you were there, weren't you?"
     "You didn't know..."
     "I didn't," I interrupted testily. "Not that precisely that would happen. But something would." I help up my truncated little finger and tapped the scar on my cheek, "Something always happens. I wanted to be prepared. I pushed him and he eventually agreed. It's nothing fancy: metal plates in leather. You already know it. You call it winter coat."
     "It doesn't usually stop bullets," Rohinia said.
     "Hyneman plates," I flinched a grin, stifled it. "The scales are tempered steel over hardened leather with a layer of ceramic on the outside. It can stop single balls from old flintlock pistols. The ceramic shatters, but slows the bullet enough that the metal stops it. Still damages the scale though, and it wouldn't work against newer or more powerful guns." It also left me with one helluva bruise across my chest.
     Rohinia's muzzle wrinkled. "And the gun. Show me."
     I hesitated. He held out his hand, flicked fingers. I shrugged took the pistol from the inside shoulder holster and placed it in his hand. He turned it over.
     "How did you know?" he asked.
     "What?"
     "Last night. You got up. You dressed and armed yourself. How did you know things were like that?"
     "Oh. I was vomiting and Chihirae was ill. Something wasn't right."
     "That's all?" he asked, turning the cylinder, examining the chamber.
     I shrugged. "And there were things that were wrong downstairs: the cook didn't know where things were. And the innkeeper's reaction to me was... wrong."
     "Wrong? How?" Jenes'ahn interjected.
     I almost snapped a retort back at the Mediator, but bit that back and instead took a breath before answering. "She wasn't surprised. When I came in she wasn't surprised to see me or to hear that I could speak. Not really. She already knew."
     Metal clicked as Rohinia hinged the pistol open, a stubby finger turning the empty chambers. "You say you have trouble understanding Rris expressions sometimes."
     I frowned. "That is one I know. I've seen it often enough."
     "Ah," his eyes glinted amber momentarily as he glanced at me. "You noticed that, yet you still ate the food?"
     "And you didn't notice anything?" I retorted, almost automatically. Neither Mediator flinched, at all. I looked from one to another, smelling hypocrisy. "You did," I said. "Didn't you."
     "The straw," Chaeitch spoke up, and we all looked at him. He waved a shrug. "I didn't think it important at the time either. Why put down clean straw before slaughtering an animal? Wasteful. The whole scene was to cover the scents from... from what they'd done earlier."
     Both Mediators had been staring at him, as if trying to spot every little twitch he made. I'd seen them do that before. Not other Rris, just Mediators.
     "A," Rohinia said after he'd finished. "Our estimate also."
     Which wasn't quite the same as admitting they'd also made a mistake. They wouldn't do that, not Mediators, but the fact remained that between us we'd missed things that'd cost a lot of lives. The pistol cylinder clicked as Rohinia turned it chamber by chamber.
     "Were you expecting something like this?" I asked. "All these precautions... was this anticipated?"
     "No." Rohinia tried holding the pistol: the grip was too big for his hand and short fingers. "No. The opposite. This was intended to prevent such an action. There had been... not threats. Governments don't do those while the Guild reads their mail. But that there had been... [insinuations] might be an accurate description."
     "And the Guild doesn't deal with those."
     A claw tapped against the pistol and lines creased his muzzle as he frowned. "Nothing raw was stated. No edict was broken. An open provocation; an open act of war; violating the agreements, those would be grounds for the Guild to act. Suggestions of what might happen... that is different. You, are an interesting case. Your presence could be considered a destabilizing influence, but then again removing you could have an even more dire effect."
     "Good to know," I said dryly.
     "For you, a," he said, missing or ignoring the sarcasm. "It means governments taste things very carefully. At the moment they are talking. There's a lot of noise and bluster, but they're caught in the middle of fear of the Guild, fear of what you might be giving their enemies and fear of missing an opportunity themselves."
     I thought that over. "So, who was it?"
     He waved a shrug. "I'm not sure. I wouldn't have thought the governments would go as far as attempting to kill you. The outlying lands perhaps might consider that they will be left on the peripheries of the feeding and try something, but this was..."
     "They weren't trying to kill me," I said.
     He hesitated. "You have a reason for saying that?"
     I snorted. "They could've just poisoned us or burned the building, a? I think they had a target. Me. Or control of me. I think they were going after Chihirae."
     Chaeitch flinched. The Mediators did exactly the opposite. "You're sure?" Rohinia said.
     I related what I'd heard and let them make what they would out of it. The Mediators both listened, then ruminated. The carriage rocked steadily. After some minutes Rohinia stopped fiddling with the pistol, carefully closed it and then held it out to me, butt first. Surprised, I hesitated.
     "You're returning it?"
     "Normally, I wouldn't. But events don't seem to be quite normal and did seem to warrant you having it. In any case: the grip's too large for normal hands."
     I took the pistol back, double-checking it.
     "Keep it out of sight," the Mediator told me. "It's a tool of last resort."
     As far as tools went, guns weren't much good for anything else. I grunted and slipped it back into its pocket, into its holster, its weight merging with the heft of the coat and restoring the balance. "Things are that serious?"
     The Mediators exchanged glances. "Somebody knows you," Jenes'ahn finally said. "Knows you very well."
     That's what I'd been afraid of. I tried not to let that thought show. "What do we do now?"
     "Now?" Rohinia said. "Now we move as fast as we can. Try and stay ahead of them. The next large town is Thieves Always Return. The next with a Guild presence is Summer Breaks. I'd like to make that, so we don't have to try and involve local authorities."
     "We could turn back," Chaeitch offered.
     "Thieves Always Return is closer," Rohinia said.
     "Am I understanding that name correctly?" I asked Chaeitch, then had to explain what I thought it meant. He thought it over, then said, "A."
     "Oh," I sat back in the seat as the coach bumped and swayed and rolled my eyes. "Thieves Always Return." In native Rris it was less awkward than my English transliteration. "That sounds promising."

From then on we moved faster. What'd been a steady but somewhat sedate pace turned to a bone-jolting, crashing ride as the drivers pushed their teams harder. Iron wheels found rocks and ruts buried under the snow and the suspension could only do so much. It still wasn't as fast the Mediators and military personnel wanted to travel, but the accompanying goods wagons weren't built for speed — the animals had their limits and the risk of shattering one of the wooden-spoked wheels was just too high.
     That first day after the inn we rode nonstop. All day. By the time we stopped at the next village the sun was westering and I was feeling physically battered. It was a small town located where the detour road swung back to meet the Ashansi river. A few larger buildings sat on the crossroads: a smithy, a store, a small inn and tavern. Other buildings were houses, spread out toward the frozen river. Wisps of smoke rose vertically from chimneys, catching the last of the sun.
     We didn't stop for long. The Mediators went to talk to someone in the inn, Jenes'ahn walking stiffly and trying not to move her bound arm too much. After ten minutes or so I heard shouting from inside. The Mediators came out and I got a glimpse of villagers grouping behind them, looking distraught, heads turning to gaze back the way we'd come. The Mediators climbed in and we set off again.
     I craned my neck to try and look out the window, back at the town we were leaving. There were anxious-looking Rris in the street outside. I sat back and gave Rohinia a questioning look.
     He met my stare and cocked his head slightly. "We told them what happened at the inn," he said. "We asked if they'd seen anything out of place. Nothing that anyone could recall. Perhaps a bit more traffic than was usual, but nothing more than that."
     "And that got them that upset?"
     "Some of them knew staff at the inn. They were upset, frightened. They wanted protection."
     "Oh," I said. "Can we do anything about that?"
     He scratched at his chin. "We aren't in any position to offer assistance. In fact, our presence here would probably [something] matters."
     "They would do that here?" Chihirae quietly ventured from beside me. She looked back at us. I could see her ears twitching, also muscles under her pelt flinching. Nervous tics. "They would do what they did at the inn to a town?"
     Rohinia gestured a shrug. "We can't be certain. They've shown they have the willingness to be so ruthless, but whether they have the capability... the inn was isolated; a town or village would be a different proposition. We don't know their strength."
     She'd looked away before he'd finished speaking, looking out the window again as small, snow-covered buildings passed on by outside. "Hey," I touched her hand gently, laying mine over hers. "You okay?"
     They were English words she could understand. I wasn't sure about the Mediators. "A," she said quietly. "Fine."
     So that day we kept moving for as long as we could. The trail swung back to the river, becoming a snow-covered, well-trodden road following alongside the frozen waterway as it meandered through the path it'd carved through the Rippled Lands: a south-westering gouge slicing through the serried ranks of ranges marching down from the north. From our perspective they became walls to the north and south, Mountains beyond mountains forming the valley walls; processions of ridges blanketed with trees and snow, faces and cliffs of bare stone occasionally scarring the hillsides. Tributaries ran from offshoot valleys and gullies to the north and south, feeding the river which swung too and fro across the valley floor: wide and slow enough to navigate if it wasn't for the ice floes creaking and grinding their way along. At last light we were trundling along a road following the river bank, looking out through bare trees and scrub as the sun sank behind us. Beyond the river, away down the valley ahead, I could see a procession of hilltops marching away into the distance, a last golden light touching the snow-dusted caps, each hill slowly vanishing as the shadow of its neighbor climbed the slopes.
     That night we stopped in some unknown farmer's fallow field. Just an empty piece of land with nothing but a good expanse of empty snow between the camp and the nearest cover. I lay on the converted seats in the freezing dark cab, listening to faint winter noises from outside and quite aware of the furry body curled up beside me. Some warmth in the night. Her back to me and as quiet as she'd been all day.
     "You aren't, are you," I whispered. "Fine."
     A pause, then she shifted, rolled towards me. I saw a gust of breath in the grey moonlight filtering through the ice on the window. "Oh, Mikah."
     "This wasn't supposed to happen," I said. "They said it'd be easy. If I'd known..." if they'd told me the truth... "I wouldn't have asked you."
     "I know," the small voice said.
     "I'll do what I can for you," I said. "They won't hurt you."
     I could feel the shudder that ran through her entire body. She'd been kidnapped before. The Land-of-Water government had arranged for her to be brought from Lying Scales to Shattered Water, ostensibly for my benefit. En route she'd been grabbed by smugglers who intended to use her as leverage against me. They hadn't treated her well. When I'd gotten to her she'd been in a cage, blindfolded and muzzled, terrified. That wasn't going to happen again, no matter what I had to do.
     "What do you want to do?" I asked her.
     She just breathed for a while. I stroked her shoulder, gently scratching behind her ears. "I don't know," she said. "Could we go back?"
     The bruise on my chest ached as I sighed. "I don't know how much safer that would be. It's still a long way back to Shattered Water. The garrison at Summer Breaks is the only one I think we can trust. And Shattered Water might... it might not be so safe either."
     "That we can trust?" she echoed.
     I scratched her back, lightly raking my nails across her spine. "Someone knew we were leaving," I said. "Someone was close enough to have those bastards ready to move. Two candidates come to mind: Bluebetter and..."
     "Land-of-Water?" she finished.
     "A."
     "Not Guild?"
     I couldn't see her in the dimness. Not her expression, just a general glimmer where her eyes caught the dimness. "Why do you say that?"
     A snort jolting her ribcage. "You came back from Cover-my-Tail with your Guild escort and a very distinct attitude toward them. Chaeitch wouldn't tell me what happened, but you've been... protective toward me around them. They did something you didn't like."
     "Something," I murmured. "A, 'something' is right. But this... they said those at the inn weren't Guild. I believe them on that. They weren't good enough."
     "Then who were they?"
     "Wish I knew. This trip was arranged a couple of weeks ago. And they were waiting for us. I don't think they just phoned home. Someone knew about this; they knew when we were leaving what route we were taking and they had time to organize that lot." I traced random curls through her fur with my fingers.
     Chihirae squirmed slightly, pushing back against my touch. "Another country?" she said.
     "I don't know," I scratched again. "Possibly. Last time something like this happened it turned out that Land-of-water had problems in their own house."
     She lay quietly for a while; a warmer-than-human bundle providing welcome heat on a night when the air seemed to steal the warmth from a body. "Treason?"
     "I... don't know."
     "But what do they hope to gain?"
     "Me," I said simply, then sighed. "People out there are worried. About what I know, or what they think I know or what they think I'll tell their competitors. They think... I don't know what they think. Some are worried they'll lose power or work or influence or money. Some want power or work or influence or money. Some are just scared."
     "Enough that they would do something like that?"
     I'd seen enough to know that some would do something like that without a second thought and with far less at stake. "Some would," was all I told her.
     "You can't be sure..." she started, then subsided. "You had those weapons, that armor. You were sure."
     I felt my face twitch in a smile that pulled at the old scar tissue in my cheek. "Not entirely, but... this happens too often. It's as if every time I step outside I have to worry about something happening. I wanted to be prepared this time."
     "How many times?"
     I stared into the darkness and counted in my head, then coughed a laugh. "I've lost count."
     "That many," she murmured.
     "A," I said and waited for her to say something more. When she didn't speak I just lay quietly. Beside the alien woman breathing in the dark, feeling her moving, feeling her warmth, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. Beside the person who thought, but not like I did. What was going on in that head of hers? How did she perceive me? How did that mind interpret my responses? Sometimes I thought I knew, but then there'd be something that'd come from out of the blue and knock me back to square one.
     I didn't want her to go, for those practical reasons I'd given her, but also for more selfish ones. She was... she was my anchor here. She'd been my protector, my friend and my lover. I wanted her; needed her; didn't want her to leave. She'd been dragged out of her home and into my troubles, and despite all that, she'd stayed. For reasons that were hers; that made sense to Rris, but that I had to struggle to unravel.
     My emotions kept defaulting to human ones, on some sub-basement level of my psyche expecting her to feel the same way. Then she'd say things about obligation and duty and position and I just couldn't work them into my worldview. Did she feel obliged to stay? Did she feel she owed me? Did she feel she owed her people? Or they'd told her she had to stay with me.
     And slowly, with horrible aspects unfolding in my mind, another thought percolated — I'd killed Rris. That night I'd gunned down... how many? A half-dozen? More? I'd never kept track, but I'd killed them.
     What did she think of that?

It all came back that night.
     Everything was gloom and darkness; the freezing dark hallways that seemed so much more convoluted and twisting than they'd really been. I shivered with the feeling of wrongness, of creeping dread as I knew something was approaching. My light was a feeble, flickering glow in shadows that seeped like black tar around my feet as I tried to get... get somewhere. I staggered through black halls, my heart hammering, gasping for breath as I twisted and turned past countless branches and turnings.
     And the shadows came to meet me. The terror surged through me as indistinct figures coalesced from the shadows and I was fighting for her life. I didn't think, just fired, again and again, blinded by fire and smoke, pummeled by noise, choking on smoke and blood and they just kept coming through the fire and I yanked the trigger again and again and snarling jaws lunged at my face...
     "Mikah!" the face inches away from mine yowled and I froze, confused, in pain. One of my hands was clamped onto an arm, the other around her jaw. Trembling violently... I was... she was. Blankets were tangled around my legs, around us where she was half-astride me. It was freezing: the doors hung open and outside in the cutting clear moonlight Rris eyes glinted as shocked-looking guards holding weapons stared in.
     "Oh," I croaked through a raw throat and let my hands drop. She half-sat, leaning on my belly, panting almost as hard as I was.
     The guard commander stepped up to the door and cocked his head. "Are you all right, sir?"
     "It's fine," Chihirae said, each breath visible in the feeble light.
     The officer ignored her and took a step closer to ask again, "Sir?"
     "I'm okay," I rasped. Shit. I ached. Where the bullet had hit me my entire chest was stiff and felt like it was creaking with every breath. How bad had it been?
     The commander didn't have a chance to say anything else. He hastily stepped aside as another figure shoved in front of him — Chaeitch, panting, still naked, with legs caked to the knees in powdered snow and an old flintlock pistol in hand. "What the rot was all that?" he gasped at us.
     "Rough night," I said, started to sit. "You don't need..."
     Chihirae pushed me back and sighed and said, "His dreams again."
     Chaeitch opened his mouth, then seemed to catch her meaning. "Oh," he said. Then, "Rot."
     "A," she said and then I saw her wave a small, impatient gesture at him: just a twitch of her hand that didn't mean anything to me.
     "I'm okay," I said again. "Just... cold." I was. Sweat was freezing in my beard, on my skin.
     He blinked at me, at her, and then said to the captain, "She should stay."
     "There's no problem?" the commander's muzzle was contorted in confusion or annoyance, I couldn't tell.
     "Nothing we can solve," Chaeitch said and turned away. "Best leave them be, Commander." The officer hesitated as Chaeitch padded off through the snow and after a second I heard his voice carry back, "Now."
     The Rris officer's ears went down and he looked at us. "Apologies, sir. Milady."
     "It's nothing," I said. "Just... close those doors."
     They did. Ice tinkled on the windows, glittering in the night glow filtering in. It was still freezing.
     "That was... embarrassing," I said to the darkness as I tried to pull coverings up and reorganize them.
     "For who?" Chihirae said. Her weight on me was a familiar one: a heavy fur blanket, a welcome source of warmth. "You can't blame them. You were screaming like a trapped rabbit."
     I gritted my teeth and laid back under the quilt and furs, staring up into nothing. "I thought those were finished. I'd hoped they were."
     She shifted, laying an arm across me, her head next to mine. Her breath was hot and harsh. "I'm... not sorry they aren't."
     That wasn't what I'd expected. "What?"
     Her hand patted my shoulder and she butted her nose against my cheek, gently. "You're still there... the one I knew in Westwater."
     I turned my head to try and see her; to see what she was talking about. "I don't understand."
     An exhalation; something between a sigh and a hiss blew across my cheek. "Last night... you... after what you did, there was just nothing in you. You just went on as if it were nothing to you."
     Was that what the cold shoulder had all been about? I grimaced, still seeing gunfire in the darkness. "It's not," I said. "It's never nothing."
     "I thought... You went through them as if they weren't there and then you didn't seem to think anything of it. You just went on as normal."
     My fingers touched bristly fur and stroked gently. "Normal? You know, before I came here I could count the fights I got into each year on the fingers of one foot. Now..." I ruffled her pelt, looking for words in her language, in her mindset. "Sometimes, if you stop and let yourself see what you're doing, you'll never get going again."
     "So you ignore it?"
     "For a time. It comes back. Later. It always comes back." I tried laughing a laugh I didn't feel.
     "You don't know how often you've fought like this? How often you've killed?"
     I felt my heart lurch. Oh, God. Why did she want to know? How could I answer that? What would it do to her? I spun my wheels for what felt like a long time before telling her the truth. "I don't know."
     "So often?" she said quietly.
     I suppose I could've said something such as, 'Yes, but they were all bad'. I could've, but that wouldn't have been right. Not at that moment. "A," was all I said. "So often. I try not to remember details. I thought they'd settled. Last night... stirred them up again."
     A soft cough in the darkness. "So, the armor. The weapons. You had a reason."
     "No. No reason. Just... well, none of those other times had reasons either. They just happened."
     "Oh," a hand moved, a finger laying in the soft spot of my neck where my pulse could be felt. "I'm going to have to ask Chaeitch about what happened in Open Fields. Huh, that female you dragged in said you were on the run from bandits. Are they the same?"
     "No," I said, more forcefully than I'd intended and the fingertip on my throat could doubtless feel the lurch in my heartbeat. "No. No they're not the same. And... Please. Don't talk about it. Don't do that. It'd only make things worse."
     "Why do you keep saying that?"
     "Because it's true," I said miserably. "And I can't tell you why."
     She was quiet for a while, her hand resting on my pulse as she intuited and guessed and made assumptions that I couldn't rightly read.
     "It upsets you," I said quietly. "That I've killed Rris."
     "A, it does," she said simply, her face close enough to mine that I could smell her breath. "Perhaps more the fact that I know you had to do it." I heard and felt a low sigh that carried more than subtle undertones of a growl. "I do remember what happened. You came for me. You fought for me. I can't fault you for that. And after last night... I can't fault you for that either. You never had a choice."
     "There are always choices," I said and couldn't help but flash back to a ship full of Rris exploding, remains of a boiler plummeting from a clear sky to splash into a lake, the physical impact of gunfire in close rooms. I shuddered: a convulsive contraction of my body.
     She didn't miss that. Pressed against me, there was no way she could've. Her hand stroked across my skin, across the knot of scar tissue on my shoulder, stopping at the lurid bruising that'd blossomed across my chest. "That looks... painful."
     "A," I said.
     A pause. "Those choices weren't easy," she said.
     "No. They weren't."
     Another pause while she just lay beside me, then she asked, "Would sex help?"
     That was something I hadn't anticipated. "What?" I blinked, then laughed at the unexpected absurdity of her timing. "Help? How?"
     "I thought it might help with the dreams," she said quietly. "You seem quieter... more relaxed after." She shifted a little and a damp, wet tongue rasped over a patch of skin on my shoulder.
     I flinched at the sensation, at once strange and also intimately inviting, then smiled in the dark and reached up, scratching gently at a handful of fur. "I thought you had concerns about that."
     "That was before. Now... it might keep the Mediators out. Besides," she growled softly and licked again, each breath washing over my skin, "knowing you, do you really need a reason?"
     That made me smile. I rolled toward her, laying an arm over her. She burrowed against me, nuzzling my neck. "You're good enough," I whispered.
     I couldn't see her expression; could only know her by touch, by feel, and there was no way that could be mistaken for human. We twisted and squirmed under the sheets, striving to make two different bodies mesh, trying to make tab a fit with slot q. She hissed an intake of breath and growled briefly, then there was a moment when everything was easier and she was a hot, hairy body pressed against me, arms around me, clutched to my chest hard enough I could feel her heart racing. We clung to each other, her head nuzzled into my neck. I could smell her musty scent, feel her breathing, feel her tension and trembling as she held on tight enough that I could feel her claws digging in. They hurt a bit when she clenched hard but I just didn't care.
     On that freezing black night in a freezing box in the middle of a snow-blown nowhere, we were alike enough in that we just wanted to hold tight and try to forget everything else for a while.

Dawn had only just begun to touch the surrounding hilltops when we set off the next morning. Golden light streaked across the highest peaks, a dazzling bright scan line of warmth caught across the world against a clear blue sky. Below that slowly-descending terminator snow-covered slopes and trees were still shrouded in frigid blue shadows. I was still yawning uncontrollably, had a crick in my neck, a muzzy head, fur in my mouth and a completely inappropriate craving for a coffee. Rraerch poked her head in, wrinkled her nose and just asked if we'd had a better night before subtly retreating.
     The Mediators weren't easily put off. They simply bore it with stoic imperturbability and sat quietly while I went through my assigned lessons for the day. Chihirae leaned against me and encouraged me with the pages of dense text, helping when I became hopelessly mired in terms that were far beyond my ability in their language. That chapter was about horticultural and agricultural matters: various crops and stock in different countries, production levels, transport and distribution and trade and storage routes, a mind-bogglingly extensive range of information about everything I never wanted to know about Rris farming. Along with that drop in the flood of information the Mediators wanted me to absorb were the restrictions the Guild was imposing.
     They didn't want me to do anything that'd cause disruptions; give any one entity or individual a decisive advantage. I couldn't introduce new devices or techniques that'd produce imbalances in the trade and market systems. Rris farmers were just starting to take advantage of the tools their new industries could produce: iron plows and moldboards and mechanical seed drills were becoming affordable. Local governments were funding new and better roads that could carry goods further, faster. Water trade was already extensive, mostly through coasters and other shallow draught sailing vessels — their steamboats weren't efficient enough to be economical. Yet, but that was changing faster than the Mediators would've liked.
     Nothing I provided to any petitioner was to offer an overwhelming advantage. The Guild wanted any new technologies to result in changes that were initially small, controlled and manageable. Until they could evaluate the effect and then roll them out elsewhere. Or at least control the distribution.
     I could understand their sentiments, but what they were requesting was all but impossible. The most incongruous little thing could have ramifications that simply couldn't be anticipated. An automated reaper or harvester, for example, would revolutionize their farming industry — single farmers could work far greater parcels of land with greater returns than the old ways. But at that moment farmers worked much smaller parcels of land, so there was a proportionally larger number of small farms and they couldn't all suddenly upgrade and increase in size and output: There'd be surpluses, demand and prices for crops would plummet, there' be turmoil in markets across the boards. Farmers would have to adapt or become redundant, which was a glossed-over term for starve.
     The Guild specifically stated they wanted nothing that affected the status quo. No weapons, or technology with ancillary military applications, which excluded a helluva lot: something as basic as barbed wire would be questionable. Likewise compact steam engines, combine harvesters and other sorts of automation and factory machinery. They weren't stupid; sensible practices like crop rotation, soil regeneration and animal breeding were already standard practice, but other concepts like selective breeding of plant strains could be considered a military advantage.
     The only good thing I was getting out of it was the in-depth language lessons. The material in that dossier was written in Rris legalese by Mediators with no consideration for my abilities and was way beyond my reading level. Chihirae's experience and patience with ignorant pupils was put to the test as we paused almost every couple of lines while I tried to struggle through the physical structure as well as grammar and vocabulary to puzzle out the meaning of a bit of text.
     "This is crazy," I said in frustration to Rohinia at one point later that morning as we stopped for a necessary break. I was able to get out to stretch my legs, the Mediators staying close by. "At this point all I'll be able to tell them about are paper clips and those things on the end of boot laces."
     "Only once you clear it with us," he said placidly, squinting into the morning light. Sunlight glared off snow and ice. The road followed the outside of a lazy bend in the river. It was broad there, five hundred meters across easy. The shorelines were frozen while out in the middle occasional lumps of ice spun past in an open channel. Reeds along the banks bent under a fuzzy encrustation of frost that was gradually misting and dripping away. A bit warmer that day.
     I glared and stomped my feet, working some circulation back. Was he joking? Hell, that was my piece. "Really, a list of what I can tell them would be easier than this. You know, anything can be called a weapon. If they can produce more food with less farmers, that would be of use for warfare."
     "A," he said. "Which is why we do not want such information getting out."
     "It's not as if they can implement a change like that immediately," I said. "It's farming. It takes years for anything to happen. And it's quite obvious."
     "Nevertheless," he said
     "Nevertheless," I sighed and jammed my hands a little deeper in my pockets. "You know you're not making this any easier."
     "A."
     I paused. "And you know we're being followed and watched."
     He hesitated a little too long. "Where?"
     "Across the river," I said, just nodding my head in that direction. "Just above the road there. Below the pine."
     He didn't turn, but cocked his head. "You can't possibly..."
     "I can see small detail further than Rris," I reminded him. "I can see."
     "And you just happened to notice this individual?" he sounded dubious.
     "They're wearing red. It stands out."
     "Why would someone trying to be inconspicuous wear red?"
     "To them... to you it's probably not. Red, I mean," I said. "Different eyes. You see it as dark grey or black, I think. Anyway, you know this."
     "Ah Ties," Rohinia grumbled without turning around. "What's your opinion?"
     I did look. Chaeitch was standing just behind me, looking out across the water. I hadn't heard him arrive. He waved a shrug. "If Mikah says he saw something, then I'd take him at his word. His eyes are unusual when it comes to that sort of thing."
     "Huhn," the Mediator grunted and then turned to look out across the ice and water. I almost started to say something, but even to my eyes details on the distant shore were indistinct: snow, trees, a line that was probably another road, hills. "They must have good eyes too," Rohinia growled.
     Something glinted over there — a flash of sunlight. "Or a spyglass," I said.
     Rohinia's ears flicked back. "Only one of them?"
     "I can't be sure. I can see some color where there shouldn't be any, that's about all."
     "You could always swim over and see," Chaeitch suggested brightly. Funny guy.
     "Perhaps I could use you as a flotation device," I retorted. "Any other ideas what we're going to do about it?"
     Rohinia was quiet for a while, standing in his long coat at the river's edge. Around us the guards and staff bustled around, feeding animals and themselves, checking cinches and doing whatever needed doing. More than a few glanced at us but otherwise left us alone. He snorted, steam spilling from his nostrils as he turned away.
     "Got a plan?" I asked.
     "A," he said.
     I waited, then asked, "Well? What is it? What do we do?"
     "For now, nothing," he said as he stalked past us, head back toward his partner.
     I looked after his retreating back, then at Chaeitch and shrugged. "Nothing. I think I can do that."

We kept moving as fast as possible. There was nothing that could be immediately done about our shadows, so we didn't do anything. We just flew casual and tried not to let on that we knew they were there. For the next couple of days we travelled as far as we could, as fast as we could, rested the animals and then did it again. The road kept following the river southeast, matching its curves and bends as it cut its way across the general lay of the land, which was convoluted to say the least.
     For most of the way the valley was broad, the river winding its way through virgin forest occasionally dotted with fields, hamlets, small villages. Further on a ridge from the east cut into the valley, pinching the road and river together again. Our convoy pushed through another narrow cutting where the icy, rocky road skirted a sheer drop into freezing water and the single rope safety rail looked incredibly flimsy. That cautious passage had everyone on edge, half expecting something to happen. It didn't.
     It took us three days of hard travel and three restless nights before the town of Thieves Always Return came into sight along the valley. The first I saw of it was the castle, sprawled across a high outcropping, sunning itself in the last of the daylight. It looked like an old stronghold, with steep stone outer walls surrounding an interior keep, the steep clay tile roofs burning in the sunset. Below the walls the town proper continued down gentler slopes, spilling over some old town walls and then scattering around the valley floor. But I couldn't help but notice that the town wasn't built on the river.
     "It was, once," Chaeitch told me, dragging on his pipe.
     "Was?"
     "The castle had a commanding overlook of the road and river bend and controlled all traffic coming through. The lord taxed heavily and was strong enough to hold onto what she had. Then the river shifted," he said, using his pipe to point to the water on its current course. "Years back there was heavy flooding. The river cut across the bend and found another route over the other side of the valley. Turned this into an oxbow lake and stayed there. Suddenly the lord's revenue was gone and her support was vanishing. She found herself having to rely on Land-of-Water for support."
     "They didn't change the channel back?"
     He eyed me. "Might've been easy where you came from, but Thieves Always Return didn't have the capability or the money. Land of Water didn't offer support until the lord didn't have any choice but to accept. Once the contracts were made, we didn't see any reason to change things back."
     "How long ago was this?"
     "Over a hundred years."
     "Ah," I said. "I hope they're not the sort to carry grudges."
     He just puffed on his pipe.
     Some hours later we rode into Thieves Always Return. There were still the remains of an old stone quay down where the river had used to run. Where the water had been was a broad depression in the landscape: a horseshoe bend looping back to the river's present course. It had dried out long ago and now was overgrown with mature trees as well as a few buildings, but it was obviously still there. A well-travelled road headed off to the south, towards a low hill a couple of kilometers off that'd been on the inside of the loop before the river changed course. That hill was now closer to the river than the old town was. Buildings were dotted over it. Was the town slowly migrating? Would it end up being a suburb of the existing one? Or would a whole new entity split off? And what would happen if the river decided to change its course again? Shenanigans and goings-on, probably.
     The old town had overflowed the city walls some time ago. Outside the walls the streets were broad and paved under the trampled snow, the buildings spaced well apart and separated by hedges and trees. There were residences as well as streets with stores and shops. Lamps burned in windows; little pools of warmth in the twilight cold.
     A gatehouse straddled the road into the center of town. It was old, but looked to be in good repair. Bored guards standing in the dark and overseeing farmers and merchants got interested when they saw us, then even more interested when Mediators started telling them what to do. Before we'd even got through the gatehouse runners were pelting off through the night toward the keep.
     Inside the walls the buildings were packed in like chocolates in a box — excluding the little map, of course. The town was laid out on a series of terraces staggered around the hill. The main thoroughfare wound its way up, switchbacking through neighborhoods of varying affluence, but always overshadowed by the walls of the fortress above. A few streetlight burned. Not gas lamps like back in the big city, but small oil lamps that offered fitful glimmer of light. Enough for Rris eyes but not really for mine. Occasionally steep little steps and alleyways branched off to either side, up or down into the surrounding maze of buildings, vanishing into darkness. The cobblestones were slick with ice and grimy snow, making the iron coach wheels skitter alarmingly sideways at inopportune moments and the steaming elk stagger and bleat protests as their heavy loads shifted.
     "There shouldn't be any problems," Rohinia explained to me as we lurched uphill. "There are issues between the Hiesh and Chihiski names, but those are in the past. Hopefully."
     Chihiski... that was Hirht's other name. That there'd been problems wasn't good news. "Hopefully?" I looked from him to Jenes'ahn who was quietly flexing the fingers on her wounded arm. "You're not sure?"
     "He was a candidate."
     "I know," I said. "That's why he's king now..."
     "Not Hirht," Rohinia interjected. "Ah Hiesh was a candidate."
     "He... I..." I got it then. "Oh. You mean the lord here..."
     "A," Rohinia grunted. "We know that about him: that he was deemed not to be a suitable candidate. 'Eccentric', was a word used I believe, but just that; not the fine details of that decision or anything else about him. There's no Guild here, so any records would be suspect. Be careful; behave yourself."
     "Why does everyone say that?"
     "Possibly because it so often seems to be necessary."
     Whatever message the gatehouse had sent it'd gotten the keep riled up. We rode in through another gatehouse, past another gate and into a cobbled courtyard with a waterless fountain in the center. The gatehouse was one side of the court while the keep loomed up overhead on the other. On the far side steps led up to a set of heavy doors that were hanging wide open. Rris were bustling around: servants lighting sconces from long tapers, harriedlooking guards trying to form up on the steps. Looked like they needed a bit more practice at that maneuver.
     Our convoy, the coaches and the wagons and riders drew into the courtyard, circling the still fountain. There was a statue of some kind on a pedestal atop the fountain — a depiction of a Rris standing amidst something. In the dim expanses of the fire-lit courtyard all I could see was a vague shape. We stopped. Rohinia and Rraerch and Chaeitch all hopped out and approached the steps. I was about to join him but my coat snagged. Jenes'ahn was holding onto my belt. "Not yet," she told me. "Sit. Wait."
     I sighed and sat back.
     The reception didn't seem hostile. Rraerch, Chaeitch and the Mediator strode toward the steps with some of our guards close behind. At the top of the steps a small group of Rris emerged from the keep's big doors, one hurrying down to meet our party while the others waited at the top. There was talking, gesticulation, then another of the Rris in the party waiting at the top of the steps pushed through and briskly hurried down. I winced, picturing the ice on those steps, but the Rris made it down without ending up sitting on his tail. There were more words and Chaeitch and Rraerch gave deferential inclines of their heads to the newcomer. Rohinia didn't.
     If there was a high sign between the Mediators I missed it, but Jenes'ahn tapped my arm and said, "All right. Go, now. And..."
     "I know, be careful."
     Be careful; behave yourself."
     "Why does everyone say that?" I said as I stepped down from the carriage. Snow on flagstones creaked under my feet. Looking up one was surrounded by walls: the gatehouse on one side, the keep on the others. In the puddle of sky visible above stars glittered hard and cold in the frosty air. The oil lamps that'd been lit around the courtyard periphery didn't provide that much light. All the small pools of fitful orange illumination managed to do was exaggerated the darkness, giving everything and everyone multiple trembling shadows. I looked at the Rris gathered around, at the local servants and guards and the entourage from our caravan and felt a bit nervous. Call me speciesist, but I've always found it hard to tell Rris apart — the cues and structures the human brain looks for in facial recognition just aren't there. Facial features, bone structure, eyes, nose, ears, musculature, microexpressions... all radically different. Even with individual that Rris I knew well, clothes and situational cues were the best ways I had to identify them. In uncertain lighting there was a lot of scope for mistakes. In crowds there was even more. I didn't like crowds.
     Around the courtyard paired specks of foxfire glinted as eyes watched me crossing the flagstones towards the group at the stairs. Guards were watching me closely and I saw other Rris peeking from windows and doors, whispering. Jenes'ahn was shadowing me, just a step behind and matching each careful step I took, taking care not to slip on the icy stone and make a complete fool of myself.
     Rohinia, Chaeitch and Rraerch the Mediator were still engaged with the locals at the foot of the steps. They were showing some deference towards one of the locals. I assumed it was an official, the welcoming committee. As I got closer they looked around at me and I mentally prepared myself for the usual, 'it talks' crap, running through some possible responses that wouldn't be too offensive.
     So I wasn't entirely prepared when one of the unfamiliar locals pushed through the others and strode toward me and was close enough I could see quite clearly when he bared teeth at me.
     A weight slammed into me, staggering me aside as Jenes'ahn blurred past and planted herself between us. One hand was held palm-and-claws-out in a halt gesture to the stranger. The other was concealed behind her back where I could see it, holding a knife.
     The other Rris stopped short, immediately, and hastily hid the teeth. "Apologies, constable. I was given to understand that was how he showed amiability."
     Jenes'ahn hesitated a bit, possibly as surprised as I was. Then she straightened and cocked her head, still wary. "Yes, sir, he does do that. We don't encourage it."
     "No?" the other blinked eyes that glowed like molten lead in the dim light. "From what I saw back in Shattered Water that is perhaps for the best. Mikah? It is Mikah, isn't it? That is how it is pronounced?"
     "It is," Rohinia offered, coming up alongside the other. "And Mikah, this is his lordship, ah Hiesh. He is quite willing to offer us the hospitality of his..."
     "Yes, yes," the lord waved impatiently and leaned forward, hands clasped behind his back like a child trying to show that he wasn't going to touch, quite unabashedly looking me up and down. He was a tall Rris, but quite slender. In the dimness I could make out some light blazes across his muzzle and on one ear. He was dressed in a long coat of fine blue cloth that glittered with embroidered silver.
     "That's incidental. Quite incidental. I must say this is a fortuitous meeting indeed. She said you may come this way, but I hadn't expected this. So many questions. So many questions..."
     "To be vetted by the Guild," Jenes'ahn said quietly. Her ears were twitching back but I don't think he noticed.
     "A, quite. Absolutely," he said in an offhand manner, still staring at me. Then he gave a quick shake of his head and said, "I understand he doesn't like the cold. Is that correct? A? Perhaps you should come inside."
     "You do understand why we're here?" Rohinia asked in a mild tone. Perhaps that was enough to hint to the Rris noble that something was amiss. He paused and looked at the mediators. "You said there was some difficulty on the road. Trouble with your coaches? Although they seem in fair enough shape."
     "Hiesh, you were a promising young man. We hadn't considered you one to resort to stooping to something like this to cater to your own interests. We sincerely hope we weren't mistaken."
     Now the noble stopped and stiffened. His stance changed, straightened, shifting from that of vibrantly intent interest to one of cold aloofness. "'Something like this'?" he echoed, biting the words off with precise contempt. "You are implying something?"
     "You seem to be pleased to have Mikah stopping by your town."
     "As would anyone who has an even glancing interest in current events," Hiesh replied and looked at me again, over at Makepeace and Chihirae, at our escort and their weapons. "You are asking me if I was responsible. You were attacked two or three days ago. You rode hard to get here seeking assistance or shelter. And at the same time you accuse me?"
     "We didn't make any mention of an attack," Jenes'ahn quietly.
     "Of course you didn't," he snapped instantly. "You just come in here unannounced and unexpected with important passengers, exhausted animals, and dirty coaches showing all the signs of having been driven hard. All your guards are armed and alert and worried. You smell like you haven't washed recently. Especially your passenger, who also smells like gunpowder and, incidentally, appears to have a bullet hole in his new-looking coat. Nothing too serious I hope?" he abruptly asked me in a lighter tone.
     I glanced down at the black pock of the bullet hole in the breast of my coat and waved a shrug. "I've had worse."
     "Most fortuitous," he said and leveled another glare at Jenes'ahn. "You come in here in such a state requesting assistance and then you're surprised when I suggest there may be something awry? Parochial we may be, Constable, but we are capable of putting bits of a puzzle together when they're handed to us on a platter."
     Jenes'ahn had gone to her stone-faced setting. Rohinia just looked interested. I grinned. His lordship noticed. "I can see why that expression is discouraged," he said, blinking at me. "I have heard a lot about Mikah here. There was a possibility he'd come this way and I certainly wanted to meet with him, but I hadn't imagined it would come to pass so soon. Do you think I'd leave such obvious spoor and cause more problems than I really require? This is mere chance."
     "Happens a lot around him," Chaeitch offered.
     "Huhn," Hiesh snorted, his breath steaming orange in the lamplight. "Ah Ties, if I recall."
     "Sir," Chaeitch inclined his head.
     "And Aesh Smither," he said turning to Rraerch. "It's been a while since I've had so many important visitors at one time. Now," he waved a hand in an inviting gesture, "I would invite you to be my guests. Or, if you are determined to maintain your [something] and this foolishness, you are quite welcome to continue on your way."
     Jenes'ahn looked to Rohinia. He merely waved a shrug and said, "Apologies. What happened didn't appear to be something that you would orchestrate, but we couldn't be sure."
     "And now?"
     "Still not entirely convinced," he said. "But indications do tend away from you."
     "As I'd expect from the Guild," Hiesh rumbled.
     "But we would accept your offer of hosting for the night."
     Hiesh cocked his head, seemed to consider it for a moment, then abruptly said, "Very well," and gestured toward the keep. "Host and guest and all that entails, you understand."
     "Quite," Rohinia said with a slight incline of his head. "A gracious offer. Humbly accepted."
     Rris were protective about their homes. Strange, they weren't as hung up on personal privacy as my culture tended to be, but they did feel strongly about their territory. It was considered incredibly bad form to intrude unannounced or uninvited. Even for Mediators. So was this display intended to prove something? Rris also didn't go in for stylized or meaningless ceremonies and rituals, so this agreement had some sort of grounded meaning. I watched the Rris watching this exchange and tried to interpret how they were responding.
     There seemed to be a certain relaxing of postures on both sides.
     "I think they're done," Chaeitch said, patting my arm. "Come along."
     "We can trust him?" Chihirae asked, sounding anxious. I didn't blame her.
     "I think so," he said. "What happened... only a fool would do something like that in their own holdings. I don't think this one is a fool. That being said... keep your ears up."
     We walked forward, toward the Mediators and the local lord and his guards. Chaeitch might've felt it was okay, but out there in the snow and dark and cold I found it very difficult to read what was going on let alone gauge trustworthiness. I moved closer to Chihirae. If something happened, I was at least a bit bulletproof.
     Hiesh watched us approach. His eyes gleamed green-yellow as he tipped his head slightly. Rohinia stood alongside him, also watching me. "You know of Mikah," he said to Hiesh as we stopped in the light from the lanterns.
     "A," Hiesh replied. "And I would make the guess that one is the Teacher I've heard about?" his ears twitched and he looked around at me. I'd shifted, just a bit, but he'd heard it. Had perhaps been listening for it. "I think that would be an accurate guess," he smiled and looked at Makepeace. "This, however... who would this be?"
     "She's a university representative," Jenes'ahn said.
     Hiesh took another look. "Really? They're making them younger than I remember."
     "Again, it's a bit of a political issue. She ended up coming."
     "Indeed?" he said and seemed to consider something before chittering a laugh. "The old fools are still trying to drag one another back by the tail, a?"
     "That's about the shape of it."
     "And water's still wet," he snorted. "Well, don't stand around here like a mob of turkeys. Get inside. And I'm sure your charge here will welcome warmth, overcooked food, and perhaps a bath?"
     "Subtle," I said.
     "True," Chaeitch offered.
     "Oh, go clog a drain," I told him, then hastily ducked my head to Hiesh. "But thank you for your offer, sir. It's most appreciated."
     He gave a chuffing cough and waved a hand to beckon us along. "Think nothing of it."
     "You seem to know a lot about me," I said as our procession set off toward the keep doors after him. "You know who Chihirae is; that I don't like cold; about the food..."
     "I wasn't sure how much was true myself," he said as he led the way up the steps. "She said she knew a lot about you, but so much of it sounded... well, sometimes people come up with the most fascinating stories if they think you want to hear them."
     "She?" I caught that. He'd mentioned it before. "Who?"
     "Some wandering vagrant. She was arrested for some petty theft, but she had some skill as a physician, so we employed her for a while. Said she knew about you, so traded some of that..." he realized that I'd stopped dead on the stairs behind him. He turned and looked down at me, silhouetted by the lamps at the keep door. "Is there a problem?"
     "Mai?" I blurted. "Was her name Mai?"
     "Oh, rot," Jenes'ahn hissed.
     "Mikah!" Rohinia jabbed my arm. "Not now."
     "But..." I protested and Jenes'ahn bared teeth at me in what was most emphatically not a smile.
     And Hiesh's features settled into a satisfied smile. "Ah, I see there are some things we have to discuss, a?"

The stove was fully stoked, roaring as the flames flickered in the open door, the black iron bulk of the thing throwing off enough heat it was a wonder it wasn't glowing. Chihirae sat in the soft pool of light in front of it, perched on a beautifully woven cushion with her legs drawn up, hugging her knees. Firelight danced across her fur as she watched me finish my bath and towel off. "You can't be sure about this," she said.
     "I'm not," I said, my skin goosepimpling. Enough heat came off the stove to warm that side of one's body, but the rest of the suite was still like an icebox. "But I think... he knew too much."
     "He could've heard that from anyone," she said quietly. "You know what people would do just to have a chance to talk with you."
     "A, I know," I said as I picked up a clean shirt the staff had laid out. A little wrinkled, but still clean, and more importantly, warm. "Ow," I winced as I tried to get my arm into the sleeve.
     "It still hurts?" she asked, concerned.
     "Stiff," I said. "It's getting better."
     "You need some help?"
     "I've got it," I grimaced.
     Her ears tipped back a bit and she watched closely as I got the shirt on.
     "He really convinced you?" she asked after a while.
     "He said things that most people wouldn't know."
     "Such as?"
     "That she would be coming this way."
     "She told you that?"
     I hesitated. "No, not as such. But, based on other things she'd said..." I trailed off, shrugged, awkwardly aware of her staring at me.
     "Mikah," she said after a bit of a pause, and her voice was low, a rumble in the firelight. "You think that after everything else that happened she told you the truth?"
     I couldn't answer that, just clenched my jaw.
     Chihirae sighed and laid her chin on her knees, closing her eyes and laying her tufted ears back. "Oh, rot, Mikah. And you're doing this anyway, a? And you know you've made the Mediators angry with this, a?"
     "So what's new?"
     "Their protection is worth any number of guns or soldiers. You want them on your side. You will at least wear that coat?"
     "I don't think he's dangerous," I said as I started to pull the pants on. "If anything happened here, this close to Shattered Water, that would sort of defeat the purpose of his little game, a? He might lie or cheat or mislead, but I don't think he'll try violence against me."
     I tucked the shirt in, paused, and added, "But you should make sure you know where our guards are. If anything happens... one of them's named Blunt. He owes me. If you have to, remind him of that."
     Her ears went back again.
     "Just precautions," I hastened to add and knelt down before her. "I don't think it's likely. I think we're safe here. From harm, at least."
     She waved a hand in assent, then lowered her muzzle and studied me, her face caught between shadow and firelight. "But you are concerned about something. The price?"
     I sighed and stood to tighten my belt. "There is that, a. But, more importantly," I picked up the monstrous amalgamation of frogging and embroidery that was the frock coatlike garment from the bed and held it up at arm's length, "how the hell do I wear this?"
     Her eyes flared as she stared at me, then gave an exasperated chitter and stood to help me with the weird Rris buttons.
     I had to sober up a bit when I stepped outside the door and paused to adjust the set of the laptop's shoulder strap before turning and setting off down the hall. We'd been accommodated in the guest wing. Like my home back in Shattered Water, guests had a semiautonomous wing mostly separated from the rest of the place. Albeit on a grander scale. Entry was through a single door and hall which acted as a sort of DMZ and contained a lot of our guards, all looking very alert. Possibly due to what'd happened at the inn, possibly because there were two annoyed Mediators waiting there with them. But the reason for all the guards was that I wanted them there to watch over Chihirae. There'd already been that one attempt at grabbing her so Rris were figuring her for a weak point. Would this Rris lord take advantage of that?
     That was the unspoken answer to her question of what I was concerned about. And I didn't have any doubt she was smart enough and knew enough about me to figure it out.
     "We're doing this?" I said to the mediators as I passed. They looked at one another and fell in alongside.
     "You know we can't allow you to discuss..." Jenes'ahn started to say
     "I know," I interrupted. "I read that whole fucking paranoid portfolio. Remember?"
     "Let's just find out what he wants to know before baring the fangs," Rohinia said firmly. "Besides, the Guild may have an interest in this as well."
     "Why would that be?" I asked.
     "If he does have relevant information about that so-called doctor of yours, then the Guild would be interested to hear it."
     I grinned. "I thought you knew it all."
     "No, that would be you. We're merely interested in finding out about this person who can vanish so effectively and who would appear to work for an organization of which we have no information."
     "What makes you think she works for anyone?"
     "She was there for a reason," Rohinia replied instantly. "She betrayed you for a reason. She recovered you for a reason. And she certainly had assistance doing that and in getting out of Shattered Water. You said as much yourself."
     I gritted my teeth. "And despite everyone bowing to the Guild you have no information about them?"
     One of his ears flicked. "They weren't openly acting against Guild interests, so there was no reason we needed to know about them."
     "And now, you do," I said and grinned. "You actually want the same thing I do."
     Rohinia snorted. We passed through the reception vestibule, the plain little white room with the brass-bound door to the guest wing. The only decoration in there was a bizarrely wrought walnut table with a small sculpture on it: a brass clockwork orrery that looked very expensive. I had a chance for another look at it as the guards there opened the door onto the rest of the keep. On the other side were some of our guards as well as a reception committee of a steward and a few of the local soldiers, all positioned a diplomatic distance down the green tiled hallway. They very obviously didn't stare at me but I still caught the sidelong peeks from the corner of my eye.
     I ignored them and asked the mediators, "So, what're you going to do if he asks for some of your forbidden knowledge in exchange for that information?"
     "You think he's likely to?"
     "I think with the amount of stuff you've set off-limits he'll be lucky to find a subject that isn't forbidden."
     They didn't find that amusing.
     His lordship was waiting for us in an informal dining room in another small suite of private rooms. Evidence of old wealth was everywhere: fine rugs on the floor, tapestries on the paneled walls and heavy drapes over the windows. Doors with little diamond-shaped panes of leaded glass fronted multiple bookshelves laden with old volumes. A few paintings hung in the chambers, but more prevalent were maps and what looked like astronomical charts, all framed and hung in places of pride. Another massive black-iron stove loomed in a corner — so much more efficient than an open fireplace and throwing out heat that filled the room with warmth that was strikingly noticeable after the chill of the halls. With their winter pelts the Rris may have found it marginally uncomfortable, but I appreciated it. It was also a reminder that the local lord knew things about me while I was still muddling around trying to figure out how much he was saying was true.
     Hiesh met us at the door. "I offer you welcome, hearth, and food, good guests," Hiesh greeted us, or rather me. He scarcely spared the mediators a glance. "You have been made comfortable?"
     "Very," I said. "It's a pleasant change after the road. Thank you."
     He blinked lazily. "Your teacher isn't joining us?"
     "We felt it best if she stayed out of this," Rohinia said.
     "A?" the Rris lord cocked his head and brightly asked, "and how did you feel about this decision, ah Rihey?"
     I met his amber stare. "It was her decision as well. We'd both prefer if she were kept out of politics."
     "Politics a?" he said, seemed to consider this a second and then flicked a hand in assent. "If that's what you desire, then very good. But I can assure you I intend no harm to any of you. Whatever happened to you I had no part in."
     "Thank you, sir," I said. It seemed safest.
     "Huhn," he huffed. "You do seem to have been around politicians, a?"
     "It does tend to rub off, sir."
     "Then I would think the best advice I could offer would be to clean it off promptly, a?" he said, then swept hand in an inviting gesture. "But please, come. Sit."
     We did, on the cushions provided. The table was the usual item of knee-high Rris furniture: round and lacquered with a black so deep it might have been a pool of oil. Red mats floated on the blackness, ranks of steaming silverware platters and bowls placed on those. The smells of hot cooked food made my stomach clench as we sat.
     "I was told you don't eat so much meat," his lordship leaned over to say to me and then indicated the dishes on the table. "There are breads, soups, stew, pastries, dumplings. And the meat has been very well cooked. Not quite charred. Sauces are in the separate pots there, to let you choose what is safe and suitable. I hope that's correct."
     "A, quite," I said quietly, looking at the spread. Indeed, the food looked as good as any I'd eaten anywhere, and not many Rris understood about the risks some of their unusual condiments could pose to me. She had. "She told you about that?"
     He cocked his head. "A," he said levelly.
     There was one way to be sure. I snapped open the carry case and brought the laptop out, swinging the keyboard away to put it in tablet mode to show the picture from an age ago: a bright room in the palace and she was sitting in the sun streaming in through a window, caught in the middle of saying something. I turned it so the Rris lord could see it. "Is this her?"
     He stared. "Is that..."
     "Is that her?" I repeated.
     For a second he paused, perhaps weighing the moment and seeing just how far he could push things. Just for a moment, then he relented and said, "A. That's her. Not as road-stained, but that's her."
     I heaved a breath and put the laptop down. He stared at it.
     "What happened?" I asked.
     He cocked his head, then just gestured at the table. "Please, eat."
     The Mediators both stared at me. I looked from them to his lordship's placid features and then gritted my teeth and picked up my spoon. It was broad like a shallow ladle, too big to put in the mouth, designed to let Rris lap from it, but I could use it to sip well enough. The soup was thick potato soup and was actually very good and for a while the only sound was the tinkle of cutlery on bowls.
     "It was an autumn night about a year ago," his lordship said after a while, in between delicate laps of his own soup. I looked up. "There had been some thefts in a hamlet. The guard picked her up as an itinerant in the area. She claimed to be a travelling physician, and seemed to be knowledgeable in the field, but the arresting officer did note a discrepancy and, being a suspicious old [something], had her sent here."
     "This was before you received word from Shattered Water about her," Rohinia said.
     "A," Hiesh replied and lapped at his spoon before continuing. "She said she had information about the strange guest in Shattered Water. She claimed to have intimate knowledge of him. She would exchange it for passage."
     "And you accepted," Rohinia said.
     The Rris lord lapped at the last of his soup. "At the time it was a sensible trade. She wasn't accused of the thefts, so there was no real reason to detain her."
     "And when word arrived from Shattered Water, she was gone."
     "A. Precisely."
     "And what was discussed?" the Mediator asked.
     The Rris lord set his spoon down and touched fingertips together. "Ah, perhaps that's a question that might be worth something."
     Rohinia didn't blink. "You are aware it's relevant to a Guild enquiry?"
     "Is it?" Hiesh asked, lifting the silver lid on a platter of meat. "If you don't know what was said, how can you be sure? And anyway, nothing we discussed was, or is, to the best of my knowledge, proscribed by the Guild."
     "But you are aware that there are things Mikah is forbidden to discuss with you."
     "I thought that might be the case," he said. "Nevertheless, I do have some questions for him."
     "And you think you can just ask them?"
     "I think I have information the both you and he want," Hiesh replied. "In return I ask my own questions. I'm aware of the Charter and the restrictions. I don't believe the information I'm after will trigger any of those."
     "What is it?" I asked, then looked at the Mediators. "At least listen to the questions. They might be about something like stargazing."
     Now his lordship froze and stared at me, then snorted. "You noticed the décor, a?"
     I shrugged. "A. Different from what most nobles have."
     He cocked his head and actually chittered a bit. "She was quite right. Initially you come across as something of a [buffoon], but there's a bit more to you than that, isn't there."
     "Not a great deal," Jenes'ahn said.
     Hiesh looked from her to me and gave me a deliberate grin, a copy of one of my smiles. "A, quite a bit more," he said and smoothed his muzzle out, settling back to spear a piece of meat with a fork. "You're correct about the stargazing — it's an interest of mine. I do patronize few of the sciences and dabble in them when I can. Not usual, I know. But the sky watching is quite fascinating, and I was wondering what sort of information Mikah might have there. There are so many questions."
     I smirked at the mediators. "You know, I don't believe I saw anything about that in your rules."
     Jenes'ahn looked irritated. "Not every contingency was written out, you know that."
     "So," Rohinia said, "What do you want to know?"
     "What can Mikah tell us?"
     I had to take a breath and sip at my wine. "Ahh, tricky question. I have information about what things were like where I'm from, but things might be a little different here. There certainly are different craters on the moon. Other planets might have different numbers of moons or rings or be in slightly different orbits."
     "What about tools? The telescopes I have had made all seem to run into the same limits. If they are made larger, then the images in them seem to suffer more."
     "Glass lenses?"
     "What else?"
     "Mikah," Rohinia growled in warning tones.
     I thought about it for a second. "It should be alright. The alternative way is almost useless for anything except stargazing — too delicate and bulky to move around much." I turned to Hiesh. "Your problem is distorted images with colors around the edges?"
     "A."
     "Very difficult to make a precise lens with blown glass: coloration and bubbles in the glass and you get chromatic aberrations where the glass acts like a prism. No, try using mirrors," I suggested. "A parabolic reflector.... Crap... A bowl-shaped reflector designed to focus light at one point. I have seen math books on the subject. Use smaller mirrors and lenses to direct that to an eyepiece. Since you're not using large pieces of thick glass, there's far fewer distortions. Lighter and more robust too: you can have a reflector that would be the equivalent of a glass lens larger than that plate in something you can carry. I can draw you some rough guidelines. You should be able to work out the details."
     "And this has no real other applications?" Rohinia asked. "I would think military commanders would find such a device useful."
     "You might think so, a?" I sighed and tried to figure out how to word it. "Look: they're still fragile. And good for looking really long distances, like at other planets and stars. Not so good for looking at closer things through thick air."
     "Huhn," Hiesh looked thoughtful. "Then air is thinner between worlds?"
     "There is none," I said. "It gets thinner the higher you go. After about eighty kilometers, nothing."
     "That's been considered," he said, "but there was always debate between no air and very thin air as of course the sun would need it to burn."
     I smiled tightly and didn't take that bait. Instead I only asked, "What did she say?"
     He inclined his head slightly, smiled and neatly stabbed another nugget of meat. "She told us she was on her way south after time in Shattered Water. She claimed to have been intimately involved with the handling of the strange guest they had. Of course I was a little skeptical that this ragged little doctor could have such information, but she knew details that weren't known to the general public."
     "How can you be sure?" Rohinia asked.
     Hiesh flicked an ear and pointed his fork at me. "You were sexual partners, weren't you?"
     Both the Mediators hesitated; just the briefest hitch in the motion of their cutlery to their mouths that you might have missed if you weren't looking for it.
     "A," I said after a very noticeable pause and swallowed. "We were."
     "She mentioned you were always nervous and reluctant to discuss such things with others. She did offer some details however. They were details I hadn't heard from any of my court contacts before. Would you be able to verify their accuracy?"
     "We might," Rohinia said.
     "Hey..." I started to say.
     He told us. Details that I'd only shared with one other. Then he sat there and eyed me expectantly. I sat, feeling the heat crawling up the back of my neck; feeling stunned; feeling betrayed again. What he'd just said proved... it proved many things. Jenes'ahn merely said, "That sounds about right."
     "You can do that?" he asked me.
     "A," Jenes'ahn said. "He can. He does."
     "You enjoy it?" Hiesh asked her.
     I nearly choked. Jenes'ahn went rigid, then her muzzle creased and pulled back as she snarled and bristled. "You presume a great deal! That's his business, not Guild!"
     "Huhn," he blinked at her, then at me. "Then if she was telling the truth about that, perhaps the rest was also accurate?"
     "'The rest'?" Rohinia asked on queue.
     "Oh, other interesting things," Hiesh said with a dismissive flick of a finger and looked to me again. "But, about the sun... you say it doesn't need air to burn?"
     And right back onto topic again. The sexual rumors and storytelling were pretty convincing for me. There were details there that weren't public knowledge. They were embarrassing, for sure, but only for me. For the Rris it was just information. Just something to be traded. And so we did, through into the small hours of the morning we talked, him and me exchanging snippets of information. I talked basic astronomy. I could show him some of the images on my laptop, shots of planets and nebulae and distant stars in more detail than he'd ever seen. But they were the stars of my world. They were similar to the Rris heavens, but not identical. You just had to compare a picture of the moon back home to the one here to see that there were differences in the patterns of craters and ejecta. There was an excellent chance there'd also be comparable differences in planetary markings and rings. But for Hiesh, just being able to confirm or deny his theories and observations got him quite animated.
     For the most part the Mediators sat and watched and listened. I don't know if they understood what was being discussed, but they sat and watched without interfering. What we were talking about weren't commercial or military. Granted, it may have had some profound, far-reaching consequence, but it was a reach beyond their authority.
     In return his lordship related what'd happened there in Thieves Always Return. Weighing the balance of useful information from the Rris point of view, Hiesh probably got the better end of the deal. The information I gave him was of commercial value, whereas what he gave us was mostly of interest to me. Sure, the Mediators said they had interest in the matter, but for me it was a bit more than that.
     She'd been brought to the town and kept in local cells on suspicion of being associated with some thefts simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She'd made it known she had some information from Shattered Water that the local lord might be interested in, and then provided just enough to show that she did indeed know something. She'd been brought to the keep, to secure rooms. Hiesh had been intrigued enough to meet with her in person and had then been interested to find out that she seemed to be telling the truth. He'd made the deal and for the twenty-four hours she'd told him what he wanted to know and then... he'd let her go on her way.
     Why not detain her longer? Well, as he so rightly pointed out, she was innocent of the original charges. Perhaps even more importantly than that, she'd obviously had favor with the King and government. It might not be a good idea to get on their bad side. Ironically enough, that decision was shown to be a bit erroneous when a couple of days later the government messengers had come through with the notice for her arrest. By then she'd vanished completely.
     Where was she headed? She'd told him west, through to Hunting Well via Bluebetter. Why go this roundabout route when she could've gone through Cover My Tail? She said she'd had a misunderstanding with the guard there, so this was more prudent. She'd said she'd been hired by Land of Water government to tend their guest. She'd spent a lot of time with him and knew... everything about him. He'd asked about appearance, diet, habits, personality, what she might have learned from him...
     Not a great deal, as it turned out. She'd said she'd learned more about her profession, new medical ideas and treatments. She'd learned about my home, my old life. She'd been able to tell him a bit about the world, a bit about the sky and the stars, but only just enough to whet his appetite.
     Just like the dribble of information he was able to give us.
     The lamps had guttered and servants had refilled them. The room was warm. The food was better than anything we'd had over the past few days that wasn't poisoned. The final dishes were small pastries glazed in honey and nuts accompanied with wine that wasn't too bad. Hiesh took out a pipe and reached for a lighter, then paused. "This can have an adverse effect on you, a?"
     "Probably not a good idea in a closed room," I said.
     He waved a shrug and laid the pipe down, carefully aligning it with the side of the table. "What're you going to do if you find her," he asked.
     "That..." I hesitated. "I... don't know."
     "Huhn?" he flicked an ear, looked at the mediators and back to me. "I would have thought that after everything she did that decision would be easy."
     "It's not," I said.
     "Is this something to do with your affection for her? You still hold it?"
     "It's... something," I said. "I don't think I can explain it."
     He rumbled something again and regarded his pipe for a while. "If I may ask, what was your original reason for a trip to Bluebetter at this time of year? Or is that confidential information as well?"
     A welcome change of subject. "that is business," I said with a shrug. "Discussion of a rail line is one thing on the table."
     "Mikah," Rohinia warned.
     "Nothing confidential about it," I returned.
     "A rail line?" Hiesh asked. "You mean running a rail from Shattered Water to Bluebetter?"
     "A."
     "That is... ambitious. How do the shipping and transport Guilds feel about that?"
     "Oh, they'll be invited to participate, of course," I said.
     "Of course," he said with a slightly wilted tilt to an ear. "I think... I can only wish you the best of fortune with that."

Our guards greeted us with polite ducks of their heads when we returned to the guest wing. Nothing to report, they said. Food for our staff had been provided by our hosts and cooked by our own cooks and it was safe. Our hosts had been courteous, observing all the obligations and niceties, but our guards were still on duty, still armed and armored. The pair stationed outside my room told me everything was quiet and that her ladyship was asleep.
     Inside, it was quiet. The stove was ticking away, still radiating heat. The wedge of light from the door narrowed and vanished as I closed it behind me and the silence washed in and surrounded me. I stood still, listening, a stab of unease running through my guts. I took a step forward into the gloom. On the bed I could just see hairy limbs tangled with bedclothes, a lean body sprawled and contorted in a limp sprawl. Not moving. A tableau I'd seen a few nights ago before... And in a second she *snrrk* ed in her sleep, smacked her jaws, rolled and twisted around her own spine a little more and started snoring again.
     I also started breathing again. For a moment I kept staring at her, then shuddered violently.
     The balcony doors were of wood painted white trimmed with little green carved leaves, and locked with a basic tin latch. When I swung one of them open it stuck momentarily. I shoved harder and it scraped across ice, sweeping an arc through snow banked up outside. It crunched and squeaked underfoot as I crossed to the balustrade, leaning on the icy stone and taking deep breaths of freezing fresh air. There were no guards out there: the balcony was three stories up with a sheer drop down to steep tiled roofs and darkness.
     The sky was dark, the moon a pale glow through cloud. Occasional flakes drifted down out of the overcast. It was still and cold and quiet. Freezing mist stung against bare skin. Somewhere down there was the town of Thieves Always Return. Now, there was a name that boded at an Olympic level. I shuddered again.
     It'd been a flashback that'd hit me inside when I'd seen Chihirae, a momentary recollection that'd carried with it all the emotions that'd washed over and around me that other night. For a split second I'd felt that it was all happening again. It hadn't been a pleasant sensation.
     "You're all right?" a small voice ventured behind me. Chihirae was standing just outside the door, naked in the winter night. Her fur was spiked and tussled from sleep. Her breath steamed. Her eyes were two molten coins.
     "Oh," I said. "I didn't mean to wake you. I thought I was quiet."
     "You were. I smelled the different air. Why... is everything all right? You were gone a long time."
     "It's okay," I smiled. "Everything's fine. Just a long meeting. I wanted some air."
     She shifted from one foot to another, cocked her head slightly. "You found what you were looking for?"
     I shrugged. "Some answers. More questions."
     "Oh," she said, absently smoothed down the tousled fur on a forearm with her other hand. "It was her?"
     "A," I sighed, then stopped and looked at her. Really looked at her. She was tired, but also... sad? It was difficult to tell in the darkness. I leaned back against the railing. "How do you feel about this?" I asked gently. "About me chasing after her?"
     She kept brushing at her arm. "If you feel revenge is so necessary, then that is your decision."
     I winced. Oh, god, her as well. Was that how they all saw it? Was that their default assumption? She looked nervous as I stepped closer, carefully touched her chest, the long tufts of her cheek. "It's not revenge," I said quietly. "It's not. It's... something else, but not that."
     Those glowing eyes flicked as she blinked and bumped her cheek against my hand. "It's that other emotion? You still feel that bond? Even after what she did to you?"
     "I don't know," I said. "Part of me... it's angry at her. The other... it doesn't want to believe that she is what they say. There must've been a reason she did what she did..." I trailed off, knowing how ridiculous that sounded to her.
     "Strange one," she said in that low, almost inaudible tone. "Just because you want to believe it doesn't make something true."
     "I know. I know," I sighed and grimaced. "I know what she did, what she probably is, but a part of me just doesn't want to accept that."
     She stared at me for some time, doing the same as I was doing to her: trying to make sense of the real meaning of what was being said. In her eyes her pupils were shimmering coins of abalone blue-green light. Her breath wisped in the air. Fat snowflakes settled on her muzzle, sticking in her fur. And I loved her. And I wanted to understand what she was thinking. Sometimes that gulf between us was just a bottomless pit that swallowed nuance and gave nothing back.
     "I understand what you're saying," she said quietly. "But I don't understand why you would say that."
     I sighed again and leaned forward, laying my forehead on her muzzle for a bit. She reached up and patted my cheek. "I wanted to know if you are... upset about this," I murmured. "About me asking about her?"
     "No?" she sounded uncertain. "Should I be? Is it dangerous?"
     Dangerous. It wasn't that I'd meant. For a human woman jealousy might be a factor. With her it could be something different but just as bad. "I don't know," I said honestly. "I don't know what she's doing or who she's associated with. I think something is going on."
     "Something like Open Fields?"
     "It feels a bit like that."
     "You won't do anything foolish?" she said, muzzle creasing slightly.
     "You know me."
     "Oh, yes. I most certainly do. That's why I asked."
     I felt myself smile, an involuntary twitch. "Do you want to stay here?"
     A pause. "Why... do you ask that?"
     "Because it might be safer."
     She thought about that. "You trust him?"
     I shook my head. "I can't say I do. Not entirely. I just I don't think he's... playing any games."
     "What does that mean?"
     "Apparently he was a candidate. In line for king, you know that?" I asked.
     "A."
     "I think the reason he wasn't chosen was that he never really had much interest in it."
     "That wouldn't be seen as favorable," she chittered and bumped her head against me again. "Huhn, you mean he's not interested in the political hunts."
     "He doesn't seem to be," I said. "He can talk your ears off about stars and planets though."
     "A sky gazer, a?"
     "A little bit of everything," I said, straightening to look up at the ceiling of clouds, the feeble glow of the moon barely making it through. "But not enough of what they wanted. So he's here where he can do what he is interested in."
     "And because of that it's safer?"
     "Those ones who attacked us at the inn, I think they're still following us. They might try again. I think they probably will. I don't think he is dangerous. I know those others are."
     "It's a guess, then?"
     "Yes. Pretty much. But perhaps they could get you back to Shattered Water. A few days... the Palace would be safe."
     "I think," she began tentatively. "I think I would go on," she said finally. "At least I know who to trust. I don't have to worry about the guards selling me out one night."
     Her voice choked off then as she stumbled too close to uncomfortable memories. I felt her tense, her claws pricking in through my shirt where her hands were laid on me. "Hey," I whispered, just making some sound to take her mind off it. "That's not going to happen, a? I promise."
     Chihirae raised her head, her nose just centimeters from mine and she started to say something, then bit down on the words. A small chitter escaped her.
     "What?" I asked, a bit off balance. I hadn't meant it to be funny.
     "You..." she started to say, then vented a soft hiss and gently bumped her head against me again. "Thank you, Mikah. That is... Thank you."
     I blinked. "I said something wrong?"
     "No. No, you didn't," she said.
     "Then what... ?"
     "It's nothing," she told me and reached up to pat my cheek. My beard crackled where her hand touched. "You're getting frosty, you know. You want to come back inside now?"
     I hesitated, puzzled. There was something there I'd missed. Again. Chihirae took my hand in both hers and tugged gently, urging me inside. And only two steps in, I got it and stopped dead. That brought her up short and she turned, still holding my hand, looking up at me, half in shadow, half in moonlight.
     "It's my fault, isn't it," I said. "I'm saying I'll protect you, but I'm the reason this is all happening. I'm the reason you're here."
     Her ears wilted a bit and she glanced down at our hands. "Mikah, it's not like that."
     "No?" What I could read in her expression was enough. "They're right about me and trouble. It's like a magnet trying to protect you from iron," I leaned my head back and laughed, exasperated at myself. "I am a fool."
     A furry hand patted mine. "Which makes it all the more [interesting]," she said, an inflection on 'interesting' that I wasn't familiar with. I blinked, still trying to understand. "You know this," she said and her ears flickered up again. She chittered. "You know it, and you promise to do the impossible. Like so much about you, the impossible seems to happen.
     "I trust you."
     I didn't know what to say to that. At that moment it felt that anything I did say would just break the illusion she was building, that I could keep that impossible promise I'd made. I felt myself shaking and knew she felt it too.
     "Come on," she said. "You're cold; you smell exhausted; and it'll be dawn soon. Some sleep while we can. A?"
     I went with her, so grateful that she'd left me a way out.

An hour of sleep wasn't really enough, but that was all we got before staff were in the room urging us to get up. I yawned my way through my morning routine as annoyingly energetic Rris servants bustled around with hot bath water and freshly ironed clothing.
     There was an invitation from his Lordship to meet for breakfast. The Mediators, Chaeitch and Rraerch were included. As was Chihirae. It'd have been quite impolitic to simply leave without acknowledging that, so we spent some time at his table enjoying smoked salmon and bison jerky while the frost on the windows started blushing the faintest rose as the first light of the sun touched it. He paid a lot of attention to Chihirae, flattering her shamelessly. And when we left he made her a gift of a deep blue woolen shawl woven through with fine silver, for 'the chill of the road'. I felt jealous, then stupid for feeling jealous.
     We walked out the front doors into a courtyard still in shadow. Makepeace joined us, yawning her head off at a time no student is naturally awake. Icicles hung where they could and rime frost whitened every surface. Grey stone walls towered overhead, blocking the early sun and casting a crenellated shadow across the façade of the keep. Above those walls vaulted an endless azure sky, perfectly clear in the biting dawn chill that nipped the nose and left pale trails of breath in our wake. The little heater in the coach was a welcome luxury and I rubbed my hands as I settled in with Chihirae, Rohinia and Rraerch.
     Guards swung the iron-bound gates open and we departed.
     If the road up had been interesting, the journey down was doubly so. The wheels skidded on frozen cobblestones, accompanied by the sound of splintering ice and iron grating on stones and the feeling of the whole cab sliding sideways. When I asked if we should perhaps walk down instead, Rohinia said that that might be risky. I held on tight and gave him a disbelieving look as the coach skittered sideways in the narrow street again and one of the side lamps scraped a gouge through the plaster on the front of a building.
     We made it down the hill from the keep in one piece. In the town below early risers were already busy. Bakeries steamed and smoked, filling the street with the smell of early bread. Local cookeries were roasting varieties of meat on storefront grills, selling to Rris out for their breakfast. Various early deliveries of food, water, milk were being made. Shops doors were being opened, wooden shutters pivoted down to make display counters, proprietors setting goods out. Hawkers shouted out deals, promoting their goods as being the best, the finest, the cheapest.
     Local mounted guards led us, a cavalcade of them clearing the way through the streets. Locals yowled insults and protests as they were moved aside, then closed back in behind us to go about their business with renewed clamor and vigor.
     I watched the crowds through the frosty window and reflected that the Rris still knew how to live in cities. They used them for their original purpose, which was a place where people could gather for mutual security, support and to concentrate limited resources so they didn't have to waste time traveling. With our addiction to the car we'd lost a lot of that, even bouncing back the other way: Cities not built to live in, but rather to drive through — live half a hundred miles away in suburban hells and commute. More resources devoted to moving needless machines than actual people. It was costing a helluva lot to fix that mistake, but at least once fixed it didn't keep on costing. At least it had been the last I heard. It was a mistake the Rris didn't need to make.
     Of course, they already had their own problems. There was a respectable traffic jam at the town gates where farm wagons and carriages were jockeying to pass through the constriction. It took some time and a lot of shouting for the guards to get the road cleared enough so we could get out, a delay that Jenes'ahn didn't appreciate. I saw her outside, stalking back and forth with tail lashing.
     "Angry, angry young lady," I observed.
     Rohinia just flicked an ear.
     I leaned back and crossed my arms. "What's the story with you two anyway? Why were you two assigned to follow me? You don't seem very alike. She's... like that all the time while you are a great deal more restrained."
     He cocked his head and twitched a lip, just showing a flash of an incisor. "She's impatient sometimes. A. That's true. She's also very good at what she does."
     "Shouting at people?"
     "She's worked bodyguard with highborn before. She single-handedly stopped a conspiracy against a guild master; she returned a kidnapped candidate; she's fought pirates and bandits."
     "Stole her sense of humor, did they?"
     Rraerch winced.
     "Mikah," Chihirae admonished.
     "Sorry," I said, shrugged.
     Rohinia just sighed quietly and continued. "She's young, but she's done her time wandering and offering Guild services. She's dealt with petty little village squabbles and guild machinations and national politics. She'd pushed hard to get to where she is."
     I nodded and looked back at the stalled view outside. I could still hear Rris shouting and arguing over who was where first. "Is there a reason for that?"
     An ear flickered. "A."
     "You won't tell me?"
     "No. That's not my right. She might, if you ask."
     "Might?"
     "A. Like you might be willing to tell her about your sexual antics if she asks," he said calmly.
     "Ah," I said. Chihirae and Rraerch looked amused. "That bad?"
     He lowered his nose and gave me an amber stare that said it all. "Okay, That bad," I guessed as the carriage started forward again. We rolled through the chill of the tunnel under the gatehouse, the sounds of the wheels on stone, squeaking wood and iron, the rattling of loose fittings all reverberating from the walls. I squinted when we emerged into a flood of sunlight, rumbling past a scowling Jenes'ahn standing by the gate, hands on hips like a little conqueror as she watched us pass by.
     Yeah, angry young lady. Whatever'd happened to her, it'd clawed deep and left nasty scars. I could understand being hurt. I could understand a single event that defined the rest of a life. What I couldn't understand was something that burned away and cauterized everything save a core of steel determination. It wasn't a good way to live a life. But was the Guild helping her with that? Or was it reinforcing those scars just to get what it saw was a better officer? Somehow, I got the impression that the Mediator Guild wasn't very progressive when it came to its members' mental wellbeing.
     The local guards cleared the way enough for our convoy to proceed. Looking out the window in daylight I got the impression of a bustling town that couldn't quite become a city and part of that reason might have been the docks. What was left of them.
     The river had shifted, but the town hadn't. Where the riverside wharfs had been was a steep embankment down to the old riverbed and now the road led down there. It was the same river we'd been following the past days. Not some little creek, but a body that'd been a kilometer across at this bend where it flowed below the overlooking walls of the keep high on its promontory. Then that water went away and there were kilometers of new real estate suddenly available. People had probably been wary about using it, fearing the river might return to its old route, but of course time passed; people forget; money overcame reluctance and so people had built there. Shanties at first, probably. Some of those survived, little shelters of scraps and ends, but they'd been shoved aside and overshadowed by warehouses, factories and workshops, goods and stockyards and markets. All that infrastructure situated several kilometers from where the river now flowed, where the riverside wharves now were.
     That was worth remembering.
     The world got a little warmer as the sun climbed higher. Crisp frost wilted and dribbled and refroze into a cold glaze on leaves and branches. Our local guard escort stayed with us for a few kilometers, out into the farmland on the outskirts of town. Then they bade us good fortune, reigned their animals around and set off back toward town. To tell the truth, we hadn't really need them — our guards were better armed and trained than they were — but the extra numbers were always a disincentive to anyone wanting to try something.
     We kept moving into the Rippled Lands, following the zigzagging southeast-tending valley the Ashansi river had cut through those giant petrified waves of earth. The river churned along, over a kilometer wide at that point, the current out in the center tearing occasional islands of ice from the frozen shores and sending them spinning and orbiting off downstream. No boats out there. Not at this time of year: no-one wanted to see who'd come off the best in a collision with a five hundred ton chunk of ice. So for a good quarter of the year the main shipping channel between these countries was closed.
     According to the Rris the next large town that could help us was Summer Breaks. The Mediators said there was a Guild presence there. I wasn't sure if that meant it was supposed to be safe — I didn't entirely trust the Guild and certainly knew they were far from infallible, but they could at least offer some backup. And they might be able to shed some light on to just what was going on. At any rate, neither the Mediators nor the guard commander wanted to hang around.
     So we hurried, making the best time we could on rutted, frozen roads. And our best must've been about five or six kilometers an hour. Of course the mounted troops could go faster, as could the carriages. It was the slower wagons that held us back, and most of the guards rode in those. If we outdistanced them we'd also be leaving the best part of our security behind. The commander didn't think that was worth the risk.
     The morning went by and we crossed the floor of the valley. The hills on the far side rose a couple of hundred meters to a sharp ridge, but the road took the easy route, following the river gorge. In places there wasn't a great deal of room and the road narrowed considerably, pinched down to a narrow ledge of land with the river on the right and steep hillside, rocks, snow and trees up to the left. Those weren't nice places to be when you looked up at overhanging rocks and thought about ambush.
     We were careful. Outriders went on ahead and more guarded our tail and flanks. Guards rode with their new carbines over their saddles, always watching the hills and the trees. It was enough firepower to deter anyone with only muskets. Perhaps that worked or perhaps there was no danger in the first place. Whatever it was, we made it through that pinchpoint in a few hours with nothing more than strained nerves. The next valley over was much like the last: a long swathe of land cupped by steep ridges blanketed in forest. Virgin forest still stood thick across the valley floor, but farmland and pasture was making inroads. Fields and fences, pasture and marched away up the valley and much further off the tree line was retreating before logging and burning. Another river was flowing down that valley, a tributary feeding into the Ashansi. It wasn't nearly as big but was still an imposing flow of deep dark water with extensive expanses of frozen marshes on either bank. It was too big to ford, so they'd had to bridge it. Three stone and mortar arches carried a road wide enough for a single lane and just beyond was a small hamlet of half a dozen thatch-roofed little houses with trickles of smoke rising from the chimneys.
     There was nothing immediately threatening so the mediators let us stretch our legs for a bit while scouts checked things ahead out. I flexed and tried to work the kinks out of my back, bending to and fro while the Rris watched me curiously. Okay, so not all of us've got spines like slinkies.
     "Rraerch?" I asked. "Why isn't there a bigger settlement? I'd have thought it'd be a good spot for it."
     "Flooding," she said immediately. "Come spring this whole area valley turns to swamp. Not enough room to build much of a town in. Also, the promontory Thieves Always Return is built around was a prosperous quarry. Most of the good building stone in the area came from there. This bridge did. Everything else around here is [something]. Soft. Sandstone, limestone, marble, that sort of rubbish."
     "'Was'?"
     "The easy rock was quarried out long ago. To get any more might bring the keep down."
     "Might not be such a bad thing," Chaeitch added, stepping into the conversation with smoking pipe in hand. He took a drag and exhaled. "Not doing much good where it is, a? And that stone could be useful."
     "His lordship might have a thing or two to say about that," I noted.
     "Perhaps," Chaeitch waggled his pipe. "He does seem the pragmatic sort and a keep that isn't guarding anything... huhn, if invested wisely all that rock could be worth more than it is now."
     "You'd probably end up regretting doing something like that," I said.
     He waved his pipe in a dismissive gesture. "A thought. That's all... Hai, I think they're ready. We're continuing, constable?"
     I looked around. Rohinia was stalking back down the line of wagons, his coat tails flapping against his legs. "A, sir. If you would care to re-embark..."
     "I'd like to walk for a bit," I said. His muzzle creased. "Just the bridge," I added. "It's not that far."
     Rohinia looked around, at the frozen countryside, the sluggishly swirling confluence where the waters met. The only signs of life were those building s away cross the bridge where local farmers were going about their business. Guards were watching them. Guards were watching everything. He hissed a stream of pale breath. "All right," he said. "Just across the bridge."
     "Nowhere else to go," I shrugged and just started strolling. The mediator fell in beside me. Along the column Rris called out: drivers snapped reigns, leather creaked and metal clanked as animals took up the slack and hauled their burdens into motion. I watched wheels turn, squeak and grind against the bridge. There were actually parallel grooves worn into the flagstones from the passage of wheels over time. How long would it take to do that? They were slippery as hell with sheeted ice, but I was taking my time and planting my feet carefully. The parapet was just as icy, but under that the stones were chiseled and carved into loops and knots of limestone rope. There were some upright posts with small lamps on them. Just little oil lamps. I supposed that some local came out to light them when it got dark. Beyond the parapet the marshes along the river bank were frosted swamps of reeds and bobbing ice-encrusted cattails glittering in the afternoon light. Against the winter glare the waters of the Ashansi were almost black, moving like roiling oil. Scabs of ice pirouetted downstream. The far bank was a distant white line.
     I paused. "Our friend is back."
     "What?" Rohinia said.
     "On the far side," I pointed. "Our friend in red."
     "You're sure?"
     Light flashed from the other side. "You see that?"
     "That I see," Rohinia said straightening.
     "Using a spyglass..."
     The light flashed again and again, steadily. Rohinia stood bolt upright, his fur bristling, then spun in a blur of action. "Into the carriage. Now!"
     "I..." I started to say.
     He grabbed my hand with claws out and I yelped as he hauled and it was either yield or get more lacerations as he yanked me over to the nearest carriage and yanked the door open. "In," he snapped. "Now!"
     "What..." I gabbled and yelped as he dug in with claws and I scrambled up into the carriage, my heart starting to pound as I tumbled in between the facing seats and looked up to Makepeace's startled face over the pages of a book.
     "Alarm!" Rohinia was shouting as he slammed the door and I still heard him shouting: "Clear the bridge. Now! Commander..."
     "Sir?" Makepeace was asking as I hauled myself up off the carpet. "What's happening sir?"
     "Might be some trouble..." I said as I started to look out the window and...
     ... it jumped toward me. There was a flash, a tremendous noise, concussion...
     I was uncomfortable, sprawled on a sharp angle. There was a weight across my legs and my head was ringing like a bell. At first I couldn't understand what I was seeing. The window was... up there. A empty frame surrounded by jagged shards. The seats were... that wasn't right. I wasn't right — on my back wedged into a corner and a heavy furry body was jammed across me, feebly struggling. There was distant noise, as if heard through miles of cotton wool: popping and retorts. Everything was tipped. Then everything tipped some more and I felt a floating lurch and the weight on me was gone; my weight was gone. Sunlight flashed through the window for a split second then stone then hills then water and then sky and then water and then the back of the cab came up...
     ... dark. Choking. Freezing liquid all around. Tumbling confusion...

"Sir? Sir!"
     ... a tenuous awareness of freezing darkness. Icy water. Everywhere. Splashing up over my chin. A hot arm around my neck, breath panting furiously in my ear. Wood creaked all around. I couldn't feel my legs. I could hardly feel my hands. Ruddy light glimmered from somewhere. Dead weight. That's what I felt. Numb. Except my head hurt. And a voice was screaming in my ear.
     "Red tie you rotted... sir!" Then something bit my ear. Hard.
     "Gah!" I tried to kick.
     "Sir? Sorry, sir. I can't... hold for much longer."
     I tried to speak, shuddered from utter cold and exhaustion. My head was throbbing. "You're awake, sir?"
     I think I made a noise.
     "Can you stand, sir? I can't hold you."
     My feet kicked something, just a toehold. It shifted beneath me. Everything was shifting, bobbing and swirling. The carriage, upside-down and three quarters under water, just barely floating. Waterlogged cushions bobbed around us and a feeble orange glow seeped through from underwater, from where the windows were. My coat was now a dead weight threatening to pull me under.
     "Oh, rot, sir. Good, sir. Thank you."
     "Who..." I stuttered ferociously, shaking uncontrollably. "Who... that."
     "Me, sir," said the Rris voice in the darkness. "Makepeace, sir. Rot and plague, sir, you hit your head when we went into the river. I held you but... we've drifted, sir. I don't know how far. We have to move. Can you understand? You can swim, a?"
     Swim? Ice was crackling in my beard and hair. My head was throbbing. An eye was swollen shut. Every heartbeat ached. My sinuses and throat were burning and I guessed I'd inhaled water. I couldn't feel my limbs, could hardly move let alone swim, and was shaking so hard my teeth rattled.
     "Come on, sir," she said, a hand rubbing against my arm under the water as if trying to force some warmth back into my limbs and I could hear desperation in her voice. "Please, sir!"
     There was a thump against the wood above me, then a scraping. I heard Makepeace gasp, then everything tipped around us as the carriage rolled. Makepeace caught after me and struggled to keep her footing and our heard above water as the coach heeled over and the doors and the broken windows rotated overhead. The flooded cab filled with the blush of a winter sunset. I could see streaks of blood-red clouds high overhead. "What was that?" Makepeace whimpered. "What's happening?"
     Another jolt, this time from below and the sky spun slowly. We'd hit something. Our drifting had stopped, but there was still current washing past us.
     "There's someone..." Makepeace said and trailed off, panting. Listening.
     I heard it too: voices outside, distant Rris shouting over the sound of the water. The carriage jerked, moved a bit, then jerked and shifted again with a jarring stop-start movement. I heard ice creaking and splintering. The water level dropped pouring out through the broken window below us and revealing the sodden, ruined cabin. Makepeace and I staggered and slumped down onto the other door even as the waterlogged carriage lurched again. I tried to stand but I couldn't even feel my legs let alone move them. Through the jagged windowframe overhead I could see clouds glowing in the last of the light, but there was no way I could reach them.
     "A carriage?" came from outside.
     "Looks expensive. Still hitched to the animals. Someone's going to be chewing rocks over losing that."
     "Sir?" Makepeace whispered. "What do we do, sir?"
     I had my coat, my guns... But I couldn't be sure they'd even work after that dunking. And my bruised chest was a wall of pain, even just breathing hurt. And I was frozen through and through — I simply couldn't move. So there wasn't anything we could do except watch that square of sky and wait for the inevitable.
     "Sir?" Makepeace asked again, then her ice-encrusted wet hand touched and patted my face. I could hardly feel it. "Sah, no," she hissed.
     "Anything inside?"
     "Hold on..." The carriage rocked and the sky was eclipsed as pointed-eared silhouette moved in front of the bleeding sunset clouds. "It's... rot! There's someone in there."
     "What? Dead?"
     The head cocked, looking closer. "They're... ROT!" the figure reared back, vanished. I heard a yowl then a splash and thrashing and urgent voices. "... something in there."
     "What?"
     "Something. Not a person!"
     "Have you been drinking?"
     And Makepeace staggered to her feet and started shouting at the patch of sky, "Hai! Help. We need help..."
     I wondered if that was such a good idea. After a while I wondered why there were so many strange faces staring down at me and grabbing me. Then I wondered why I was sprawled in frozen reeds and mud and ice and Makepeace was standing over me, railing and gesturing furiously at someone. Then I wondered why she was slapping my face and shouting something at me, then who those blurry Rris carrying me were.
     Then why it was hurting so bad.
     The worst case of all-over pins-and-needles I'd ever imagined started burning into me from neck to toes, yanking me from the dull torpor I'd sunk into. I shuddered violently, tried to thrash away. Water splashed and something pushed me back. "No, sir. Stay there, sir. Please..."
     There was a roof, tinged red with flickering light. Fire? There was a fire. The sensations got worse, turning to something that wasn't dissimilar to burning. I struggled and a figure outlined by firelight was there, pressing me back into the heat. "Please, sir! Don't..."
     I struggled as the pain plateaued, changed, as it turned to other sensations stabbing their way through a numbness that'd drowned everything else. I'd felt something like it before, after swimming across a frozen harbor years ago: the excruciating deluge of sensations returning to frozen limbs that had bone-wracking shudders tearing through me, clenching teeth and hands and anything else I could. That figure hung over me, holding me back, saying things that I didn't grasp in quiet tones.
     Eventually, it eased. My brain adjusted to the flood of returning feeling and accepted it as normal rather than a torrent of random noise. It eased, but it left me feeling like I'd run three consecutive marathons. I gradually settled but could feel my heart hammering wildly as I heaved painful breaths and slowly became aware of where I was.
     Hot water sloshed around me, steaming in warm air that smelled of scorched metal and smoke and animals. I was scrunched into in a hammered tin tub two sizes too small for me. My coat was gone, but otherwise I was still fully dressed, looking up at a ceiling of dimly lit wooden slats supported by joists of heavy, old, gnarled timbers from which hung old tools and bits of iron and wire and wood and leather and cobwebs. The Rris kneeling beside me was Makepeace, looking concerned. She was naked, her fur still tangled and damp and steaming.
     We were in a... a shed. A stone hearth beneath a black iron hood was banked high with coals glowing orange white, casting a vicious heat and ruddy twilight. It was enough to illuminated rough-cut plank walls and uneven posts and more debris: piles of metal scrap and ingots, oddly shaped wood, fragments of farm tools and implements, half a spoked wagon wheel, bits of bridle and straps and ropes, racks of iron tools: hammers and tongs and anvils and pincers and other things. There was a doorway curtained with strips of leather revealing glimpses of pure night outside. And there were a good dozen other Rris crowding around the peripheries of the light, stirring and shifting uneasily, their ranked eyes flaring like pinpricks through to sunlight. I also caught the glint of sharp metal.
     I tensed, trying to sit up and sending water sloshing and blood pounding through my temples. My left eye ached, the vision blurred.
     "Calm," Makepeace said quietly. "They helped, but they aren't... convinced. You understand?"
     "Convinced?" I croaked. "What happened?"
     There was a murmur from the audience, a rustle of moving bodies. I heard the usual, "it does talk," being whispered. Makepeace glanced that way, then back to me. "It's a small village, sir. They saw the carriage in the river. They dragged it out... Thought it was salvage. We were a... surprise. They aren't convinced we are who we say."
     "Oh," I said. It was difficult to think clearly. My mind kept shutting down to a blank blackness. "Who are we?"
     "Sir?" Makepeace looked confused and distraught and afraid.
     "It does talk," another voice growled. "You weren't lying about that at least. Can it understand?"
     "He's frozen," Makepeace protested. "He's half drowned and chilled through. Give him a minute!"
     "You've had our time and our patience," the other growled and another Rris stepped around her to stare down at me with amber eyes. Male or female, I couldn't tell. The person was older, short but stocky. Long grizzled grey and wintery colored fur puffed out around a leather jerkin and kilt and made the Rris look bulkier than it probably were. One ear was tall and tufted, the other was lopped off about halfway up. Both laid back as the Rris regarded me. "It doesn't last forever. Now, what the pestilence are you?"
     "What am I?" I repeated dumbly and flicked a finger at the water. "I'm... I'm wondering why I'm in a bath."
     "You were about to freeze to death, sir," Makepeace said. "We had to warm you. This was... the best way. The forge warms things well."
     "Ah," I held my hand up and flexed my fingers. They ached, right to the bone. I fancied I could hear tendons creaking. I winced and tried to focus on what was going on. "Well, then, thank you. And you told them who we are?"
     "She did," the Rris interjected. "I wanted to see if you told the same story. Actually, I wanted to see if you could tell any story at all. What the rot are you?"
     Hostility. Fear hiding behind a bluster of anger and control. I recognized that, along with the tense, focused stares of the crowd lurking behind. This... could get dangerous.
     "I'm a guest of Land-of-Water government," I said. "And a guest of Bluebetter. My name is Michael. You have met Makepeace. We were heading toward Bluebetter from Shattered Water. I think we were attacked. We were crossing a bridge. There was an explosion, I think, and then we were in the water."
     "Guest of the government," the local mused. "Do you have any proof of that?"
     "Ma'am," Makepeace protested. At least now I knew her gender. "You saw the coach. The crest..."
     "Doesn't mean much," the other Rris growled. "You were in a carriage. Perhaps running, a? From whom? Who attacked you? Why were you going to Bluebetter? Lot of questions there."
     "Oh, for fucks sake!" I sighed. "Makepeace. Is my coat here?"
     "Sir?" if her eyes had gone any wider they'd have rolled from their sockets. "Yes, sir."
     "Inside pocket. Left side. There's a packet."
     She waved an affirmative and stood.
     "Hold," the local told her and then called, "Hai! Neeriah, watch her, will you?"
     Another local loomed up behind Makepeace, a burly individual with a stout cudgel gripped in one hand. Makepeace looked nervous and the local stayed close by her as she went over to the forge where her clothes were slung over an anvil, steaming as they dried. My coat was nearby, hanging from a peg and also dripping wet. She fumbled around inside and produced a small sealed wax envelope. She waved it and I nodded. She brought it back to us. The older woman took it and eyed it suspiciously.
     "That's the royal seal," Makepeace offered.
     "Huhn," the other snorted and pried it open with a claw. I really hoped water hadn't gotten in.
     She read the note once, eyes flickering over the script, up and down and left and right. Then again, just as fastidiously. Not an exercised reader, I guessed. Her ears went back and she looked at me. "You really need this?"
     I shrugged. "You'd be surprised how often this sort of thing happens. The bath is new, though."
     "You actually are a guest of his lordship," the woman said in wondering tones and handed the note off as the whispers from the audience started again. Makepeace took it and started to surreptitiously read it herself.
     "A. And I didn't catch your name."
     "Shohetorimai aesh Merthi," she said.
     "Sho... Shohetorimai," I enunciated very carefully, trying to fix the sounds in my head. "Pleased to meet you." I started to lever myself out of the water, managed to get my legs under me and then found someone had replaced my muscles with overcooked pasta. I staggered, water slopped onto the packed earth floor. Makepeace lunged and caught me before I fell on my face, getting a shoulder under my arm. My wet shirt squelched and dripped down into her fur. "Shit," I croaked. "It's more difficult than it looks."
     Makepeace grunted something and held me as I gathered my strength and tried again. The local Rris watched and there were a few chitters as she helped me stumble out of the tub and wobble over to a stump of wood near the forge. I slumped down, shuddering from a bone-deep weariness that sapped every ounce of strength I had. The heat from the forge was fierce and welcome and I just closed my eyes for a second.
     Something dabbed at my head. Makepeace had a piece of rough cloth that had probably been a piece of sacking in a former life and was trying to towel me off with it. Without much success. The locals were off in a huddle at the smithy doors. There were raised voices. I'd dozed?
     I shivered, nervous and exhausted. Steam was pouring off me in the heat from the forge. "Makepeace?"
     "Sir?"
     "Where are we? What happened to the others?"
     "This is... it's a village. Downstream somewhere. I don't know exactly where. The others... I don't know that either, sir."
     "Downstream?"
     "A, sir. We floated for at least an hour."
     How far was that? How fast was the current? How...
     "They pulled us out, sir," Makepeace said as she rubbed at my hair. "But we're on the other side of the river."
     That took a second to sink in. "Oh. Rot. Is there anywhere they can cross?"
     "Aesh Merthi said the ferry in Summer Breaks is the only way to get wagons across. Otherwise there are only small boats."
     "They have any here?"
     "A." She hesitated. "You think we might need one?"
     "It'd be the fastest way to Summer Breaks. Is there a road on this side of the river?"
     "A. But, sir, you're in no condition to walk or even ride."
     What I was concerned about was the fact that our unknown assailants already had people on this side of the river. Did they know I'd fallen in with the coach? If they didn't, then there was a chance they'd stay focused on the caravan. If they'd noticed, then there was a good chance they'd sweep the riverbank and if we stayed put they'd find us.
     Shohetorimai returned carrying a small bowl and a couple of mugs. "If you would care, there's some stock simmering."
     "Thank you," I said as I took a mug, held it out while she filled it with something thick enough to be gravy. It was strong and hot and hit my tastebuds like a firestorm. "Uhn," I choked.
     "That's alright?"
     "That's very good," I said. "Thank you. For everything. But I'm afraid we can't stay."
     "But they can help us..." Makepeace started to say.
     "The Inn," I reminded her bluntly. "What they did there, they could do here. We can't stay."
     "'The Inn'? Shohetorimai noted. "What inn? What happened?"
     I looked around. There were cubs in audience, watching us, fascinated by the impromptu entertainment. "Ma'am, can we talk alone?"
     "They'll hear what I do," she said firmly.
     I sighed and sipped again. "Alright. Ma'am, I told you we were attacked. Those people might come looking for me. They are..." I searched for the word and didn't have it.
     Makepeace said a single word and the older woman's ears went flat. I continued: "They have killed to try and get me, and they'll do it again. I can't stay and hope our people get here first, because they might not."
     Shohetorimai looked around at the other villagers who'd grown very quiet and lowered her nose, glowering. They got the message and most of them hastened out, ushering the children ahead of them. The couple who remained included that big Neeriah from earlier and some old grey furred male wearing a heavily-patched canvas coat. "This affects us," Neeriah said. "We should hear."
     "They're old enough to make their own decisions," Shohetorimai said. I waved a cautious assent.
     She leveled a double-barreled glare at me. "So, what happened at this inn?"
     "They got there ahead of us. Killed the staff, the guests, everyone. Took their places."
     "Why?"
     "To get me, most likely."
     Her muzzle twitched, flashing teeth. The others looked uncomfortable. "Who are they?" she asked.
     I shrugged. "We don't know."
     "And they did that because of you? Why?"
     Makepeace made a strangled sound and when people looked at her said, "Ma'am, there are people out there who would do just about anything to get their hands on him. There's been talk of war because of him."
     "Again: why?"
     "Because he knows things, Ma'am. Things they either want for themselves or to stop someone else getting them."
     "What sort of things?"
     "Things that might be. That no-one else has thought of yet."
     Shohetorimai stared at me again. "That sounds very strange to me."
     "Yeah, I get that a lot," I said. "I'm afraid it's true though. And the thing is, these people might be coming. If they find us... If they know we were here, I don't know what they will do."
     She tipped her head. "That sounds suspicious. And if we help you and you were running from the law?"
     "You recognized the seal on that note?" Makepeace said.
     "A," Shohetorimai slowly acknowledged. "Seen that often enough on tax declarations." She paced a few steps, the orange light from the forge rippling across her. "Very well," she finally said. "How can we help?"
     "Is there a boat that can get us to Summer Breaks?" I asked.
     "A boat?" she snorted. "A, we have some small boats, but the river... you've seen it. I wouldn't want to try it."
     "Shohetorimai," the other older Rris in the patched coat had just been leaning back against a post and listening. Now he spoke up for the first time. "It can be done. I wouldn't want to take a big boat out on that, but a small one... that's been done before."
     "You've done it?" she asked.
     He tipped his hand. "Kesti did it."
     "And he's been dead, what, fifteen winters now?
     "A, and he taught me well. A small boat can do this. Anything big would be battered like a cub's ball, but a small boat... You stay out in the current and a small boat just travels with the ice. If you know the course, then a bit of care, a bit of luck..." he waved a shrug.
     "So we could do this?" I asked.
     "You?" He snorted. "Hardly. The currents, shallows, deadwood and cut-tails and sluices... take the wrong fork in the dark and this time there might not be anyone to fish your bodies out."
     I looked at Makepeace who just looked worried. "We can't walk, sir," she said to me. "Not in your state. And, to be honest, sir, you ride just marginally worse than someone who can't ride."
     "Oh, thank you. Thank you very much," I said and she laid ears back and radiated embarrassment.
     "Shit," I sighed and rubbed at my face. "The worst thing about that is you're right. But we can't stay. I don't know what happened at the bridge, but I'll bet there's probably going to be a race downstream chasing after us. If the wrong side gets here first..." I didn't finish that, not entirely sure how to. "I don't think we can risk that. We're probably going to have to take our chances with the river."
     "There is another option," Shohetorimai said.
     "Ma'am?" I asked.
     "You could always ask Hesk here if he'd be willing to take you," she said, nodding toward the oldster in the ragged coat.
     Makepeace and I exchanged another look. She said, "that would be asking... a lot."
     "A," she simply acknowledged and waited for us.
     I hesitated and then turned to the old male and asked, "Sir? It is a lot to ask, but would you be willing? I don't have... We can't pay you, but I'm sure the government can reimburse."
     For a few seconds he didn't say anything, then grunted, "Huhn! It'd go a little way to repaying what they've taken over the years." He cocked his head, squinting at me. "I'm guessing you have an interesting story?"
     "It's... unique," I said.
     "Putting it mildly," Makepeace added and ducked her head. "Sorry, sir."
     "All right," he said. "You tell me your story, your people pay what I ask and I'll take you. Agreed?"
     I looked at Makepeace again, trying to see how she was reacting to this. She just looked uncertain. So I made the decision, I nodded and told the Rris, "Agreed."

The pale spill of the Milky Way was an ethereal arch across the valley. Snow seemed to fluoresce with a ghostly-cold glow under the starlight, but everything else was dark. Trees and hills were silhouettes, jagged black cutouts against the distant veil painted across the vault of heaven. Shadows were blacker than the soot caking the smithy chimney. From what I could see in the darkness the little village was nothing more than that: a few buildings on the road by the river. The smithy, a town hall and store and a few other communal buildings were grouped down by the water. Houses were further spread out as Rris custom and sensibilities dictated, nestling privately between huge old hedgerows. A few lights glimmered: here a candle burned in a window, there some light seeped under a door. Otherwise there was nothing but feeble, cold starlight.
     Our hosts led the way down to the river and we followed. My clothes were still damp and the brittle night chill pinched at the exposed skin on my face as I walked very carefully through the darkness. Makepeace stayed close enough that her shoulder bumped against me. Out on the limits of my vision I could see dimly defined figures shifting and the occasional flash of eyeshine from villagers lurking on the sidelines, watching the show from a distance.
     A wooden jetty spiked out into the river, out across the ice crusted along the shoreline and into the deeper, darker slow churn of flowing water. Downstream, the humped shape of the overturned carriage lay on its side amongst crushed reeds and mud, on its side with the broken remains of its wheels in the air. It was battered and scarred, the painted woodwork pocked and splintered as if it'd been pelted with giant rocks. I remembered the stones of the bridge and realized it probably had. Locals were clambering over the remains. Some of the luggage chests had survived. Mine hadn't been on that coach, but Makepeace's had. She went to see what she could salvage.
     "It's pretty sodden," Shohetorimai said to me. "There are some chests... I don't know how much has been taken. Usually what's found in the river is never claimed. Never been a problem before."
     "It shouldn't be this time," I said.
     "You can say for sure?" she said. "They come here and find the carriage and no sign of you. We might have some explaining to do. How can we tell your friends from the others? And how can we persuade them you left of your own will?"
     "Ah," I could understand that. I thought for a second. "There should be one called ah Ties. Or a pair of Mediators: Jenes'ahn and Rohinia. She's young and angry and he's old and tough. They can accurately describe me. They should know about Makepeace also."
     "If they aren't there?"
     "I would suggest you be exceedingly careful," I said glumly, shivered. "It might be for the best to say you found the carriage and nothing else. If they are my friends they might be annoyed, but you've done nothing wrong — I can easily sort things out when they catch up in Summer Breaks.
     "If they're the wrong ones, then..." I considered and sighed. "Then I'm not sure what they'll do. They won't care about the coach. They're after me, and they're dangerous. Very."
     "We should plead ignorance?" she asked.
     "You could just tell them we took a boat and went downstream," I said. "Close to the truth, a?"
     "A," she said.
     Makepeace hurried back, a small bag in hand. "This was all there was," she said holding it up. I could see it was dripping and frosted in ice. "We should go now."
     "A," I agreed.
     The end of the rickety jetty projected out past the ice, out where the current was keeping the channel clear. That was where someone had snagged the coach with a grapple as it floated past and the current had swung it around into the shore. Hesk's boat was tied up out there. It was remarkably similar to the one I'd been a passenger in while running from the Guild over in Cover My Tail: a little clinker-clad skiff with a mast and some room for cargo or passengers. It'd been stripped down for the winter and Hesk had been busy reloading and refitting. As we approached there was a clatter as he tossed a couple of oars down from the jetty and then dropped down after them. The boat hardly rocked as he landed nimbly on both feet and set about putting oarlocks in place.
     "You ready, Hesk?" Shohetorimai asked.
     "A," he said, looking up at us, at me. "Whenever they are." We were. Makepeace just dropped down into the boat, as easily as Hesk had. I clambered down a bit more slowly. I'd been in the river once already that night, and that was enough for me. Makepeace and I settled ourselves in the bow, by the small locker there. A minute later and Hesk was at the oars sculling the small boat out into the dark water. The current caught us, swinging the bow around. There wasn't much of a sense of movement, but I looked back to see the faint lights of the village receding into glimmers and then vanishing into the night.
     "Thank you," I said to the Rris at the oars. He was just dipping them occasionally, keeping the boat straight. "I know you didn't have to do this."
     "Huhn," he snorted. "It was this or hold you there and sell you to whoever was after you."
     I hesitated, not sure if he was joking or not. "I'm pleased to see you decided to go this way."
     "Yes, well, after what happened at Three Birds Fall we decided they probably wouldn't honor any deal." Starlight whitened a glistening grin. He probably wasn't joking, but saw some sort of humor in the situation. "Best for all to get you out of there. If you honor your end of the deal, all the better. The money for this sort of work is always welcome."
     "I never mentioned the name of the place," I said carefully.
     He snorted. "You didn't have to. We'd heard. Everything flows downstream, you know. We wanted to see what you'd say about what happened there. If you'd be honest about it."
     I shook my head, "Not much point in lying about it."
     He leaned on the oars and waved a shrug. "You might think so, a? I think some might think what they'd found was too dangerous. Best throw it back. Never saw it in the first place. A?"
     "I... hadn't thought of that."
     Hesk snorted. "Not a very twisty creature you've got there, ma'am," he said to Makepeace.
     "No, sir," she said quietly, sorting through her sodden things. Then she made a little mewling sound and lifted something out — a book. When she opened it the water-logged pages just disintegrated into a mush. Her ears wilted and she stared mournfully at the ruined pulp.
     "Nothing sadder than a wet book," I noted quietly. "It was important?"
     "It was Tehirski's dissertations on Mind and Perception," she said in a small voice.
     Of course I didn't know it at all. "Valuable?" I asked.
     "No," she said. "Not at all. It was all I could afford."
     Oh. I could've said that I could easily buy her a new one, but I didn't think that'd be right. "Are you being paid for this?"
     "For this?" she gestured at the dead winter night in the middle of the river. "'A great opportunity,' they said. 'You should be grateful,' they said. It'll be part of your [something]. Sir, I have to say I don't really have enough to pay for my meals."
     "Really," I said coolly. No-one had told me she was trying to pay her own way. I wondered just what was going on at the university. "I think something will have to be done about that."
     "Sir?"
     "You're here on behalf of the university, they shouldn't expect you to use your own finances. I'll see about getting you paid properly."
     "Sir..." she started and then caught herself and ducked her head. "Thank you."
     "You really shouldn't have to."
     The river was wide and lazy at that point. We weren't moving much faster than the caravan had, but it was certainly smoother. Hesk occasionally had to dip an oar and steer the boat around obstacles in the water, just using minimum of effort to adjust course. More than half the time I couldn't even see what it was we were dodging. Sometimes we bumped against floes of ice but never hard enough to raise more than a light thump against the hull. It was cold though. My damp clothes got clammy, then chill. I found a piece of sailcloth in the forward locker and wrapped that around myself and huddled and shivered. After a while Makepeace nudged me.
     "Open that," she told me, plucking at the cloth.
     "You're cold?" I asked, opening the cloth for her. She scootched back in between my legs and leaned against me, then took my hands and pulled the coarse hemp canvas sail closed around the two of us.
     "No," she said. "You are."
     In contrast to the frigid night air her body felt like a fire was burning under her skin. I looped my arms around her, relishing the warmth and embarrassed at myself at the same time. "This doesn't mean anything," I whispered into the fur behind her ear, which promptly laid back.
     "No, sir," she said. "Of course not, sir."
     "So," Hesk said to me, "Just what is your story."
     "Long," I said. "Complicated."
     "We've got time," he said.
     That we did.
     Water paddled around the hull. In places the black surface drank the starlight; elsewhere it was a warping mirror, reflecting a continuously shifting distortion of the pale arch of stars overhead. Hundreds of meters away the distant banks were white lines sketched against darkness, faintly luminescent in the starlight. Drifting trees waved broken branches and occasional lumps of ice lurking in the dark waters were only visible when they caught the light just right. It all drifted by as I unfolded my tale, heavily edited.
     Hesk tended the oars and listened. It took a while. And with Makepeace snugged up against me under the impromptu cloak I actually warmed up. I was about halfway through when Makepeace started making a low sound. I realized she was snoring. Sagged against me, fast asleep.
     "That's the second time that's happened to me," I said to Hesk.
     "She's had a busy day," he said. "She defended you, you know. Made us pull you out of that coach."
     "I thought as much," I said, letting her head loll back on my shoulder. "It's not something I'd ever intended. She's only here due to some foolishness that should never had happened."
     "A? What's that then?"
     "Still getting to that," I said. "Now, where was I?"
     "A guest of the Lady of Open Fields."
     "Oh, yeah..."
     The river kept flowing. The boat continued downstream. The stars continued wheeling overhead. The sky lightened. Color seeped back into the world. My story ended as the sun cracked the horizon.
     Hesk leaned on the crossed oars and cocked his head. "How much of that is true?"
     "It's everything the Guild has allowed me to say." Which wasn't a lie. Not exactly.
     He gave a low chitter. "As expected when dealing with the Guild, a?"
     "A," I sighed. "They have a hall in Summer Breaks?"
     "A."
     "I was wondering if I should go there or to the local lord."
     "Afraid I can't help you much there," he said, waving a shrug. "Shohetorimai probably could have told you more. She deals with the tax [agents]. There's a garrison, I know that, mainly to support the customs and excise officers. Had enough run ins with them over the years."
     He had small boat and he knew how to navigate the river at night. Of course he'd had run-ins with the guard. "Is that going to cause problems?"
     "Most of them just want to do their jobs. You don't cause them trouble, they don't cause you trouble. Most of them. Of course," he scratched at his jaw, "I've got no idea what they'll think about you."
     "They might be expecting me. They might've been told we would be coming through."
     "Would make things easier," he said.
     That all depended. "How far away are we?"
     "I expect we'll be there around midday," he said, squinted at the morning horizon. "Over or under, as it falls."
     "A fair distance to go."
     "It's slower the other way," he said philosophically. I waved agreement. Tacking upstream by sail would take a while, and the ice would make it even tougher.
     So, there was time. He had more questions and I answered what I could. I also had time to worry: about what had happened. Were the others okay? What about Chihirae? Goddammit, I'd said I'd protect her, that nothing would happen to her. And then the very next day this happens. Did that make me a liar or an idiot? What had happened up there? At the inn they'd seemed to want to take prisoners, but that ambush at the bridge had been very nearly fatal. Different groups? Or had someone just screwed up?
     And Makepeace, slumped against me, slept like the dead... if the dead snored and drooled.
     As it fell, it took us almost an hour over. The river flowed slowly, steadily. The winter sun was as high as it could get in a perfectly pale blue sky, raising glare from ice and water. We exited a channel between a small island and the mainland, rounded a bend into a new valley and suddenly there were buildings along the northern shoreline. I nudged the comatose Makepeace a few times until she stirred and groaned and tried to stretch.
     "We're almost there," I told her.
     "Wh... huhn," she scrubbed at her face, tussling her disheveled fur even more. "Already?"
     "A," I smiled. "Already."
     There were just few outlying farms and estate houses at first, isolated places nestled in amongst their hedgerows and copses. Then there were more buildings, closer together. A tower marked the beginning of the town proper. The squat fortification sat at the river's edge, anchoring one end of the town's wall. I could see the black iron snouts of cannon poking through the crenellations. Craters of lighter-colored stone pocked the walls and what windows existed were black slits. At the foot of the tower was a breakwater of broken chunks of stone protruding into the river. Downstream from the tower the waterfront was properly built up. Like the riverside in Shattered Water there was a stone quayside, built high, well above any flood waters. Piers jutted out from that; some stone, some wood.
     Buildings pushed and jostled for frontage along the quay. Narrow and tall facades of brick, plaster and wood; storefronts with diamond-pane windows beneath living quarters which leaned out toward the river. Stolid warehouses and workshops and granaries. Roofs were steep red tile or black slate, gleaming in the sunlight. Smoke rose from chimneys and stalls along the waterfront. Boats were out of the water, using wintertime for cleaning and repairs. Small skiffs hung out to dry from the pier like giant fish; larger boats were pulled up on slipways or up on the quayside. Rris bustled around up there, going about their business. There weren't any other boats out on the water, so we drew a few looks, then more as we got closer.
     By the time we got up to the wharf and Hesk had tied a line to a rusty iron loop set in the stone beside some steps there was quite an audience looking down at us. "Damn," I said in Makepeace's ear as we sorted ourselves out. "I'd hoped to not attract so much attention."
     "It's a problem?" she murmured back.
     "I hope not." I unfolded myself from that narrow spot in the bow, creaking all the way, and the noise up on the wharfside got marginally louder. Makepeace hopped out and then hurried to steady the boat while I discovered just where the joints in my legs were and managed to persuade them to bend enough to get me onto the wharf without dumping me back in the river.
     "You're alright, sir?" Makepeace asked.
     "Just stiff," I said, stretching. Wincing at the aches that exploded everywhere.
     Maybe she realized she'd been the one all but sitting on me for most of the trip. She looked uncomfortable. Or perhaps it was just the growing audience. I sympathized: I didn't like crowds.
     "Thank you," I said to Hesk. "Don't know where we'd be without you."
     "Upstream, probably," he said.
     "You're heading back now?"
     He gave me a look. "Not until I'm paid."
     "Okay," I said. "You know we're going to have to get to the local lord first."
     He grunted then asked, "That wise? The guard here is... enthusiastic."
     "Not much choice," I said.
     "Very well," he waved a shrug. "I'll go with you."
     Above us some of the locals were calling down, asking the Rris questions.
     "We're just going to walk through town?" Makepeace asked dubiously.
     "Not much choice," I sighed. "I don't think they'll come to us."

Of course we drew a crowd — I was probably the most entertaining thing they'd seen since the village idiot finally caught his own tail. They followed us as we headed into the maze of narrow cobbled streets heading away from the river. Buildings materials seemed to vary depending on neighborhood: some were wood and plaster, others stone or brick. Older buildings were haphazard amalgams of everything, often with upper floors leaning out over the street. Sometimes so far that opposing facades almost touched and turned the streets below into dark tunnels. Hawkers were shouting. Shops were displaying their wares. Eateries were open, smoke rising from sizzling iron stands in the front windows. The smell of roasting food yanked something that set saliva flowing and my stomach growling.
     I had money, sewn into the lining of my coat, but it wasn't the time or place.
     Our hangers-on stayed with us. Rris in doorways watched us pass and then joined the procession. Cubs scampered around, rushing past as closely as they dared. Older Rris with nothing better to just ambled along behind us. Makepeace stayed close by my side, her tail lashing furiously as Rris shouted questions:
     "Where'd you find that?"
     "Does it do tricks?"
     "Circus coming, a?"
     "Not the Beast of Three Birds, is it?"
     I started at that and Makepeace nudged my arm. "Keep moving," she hissed, her tail lashing.
     And of course we drew enough attention that we caught the eye of the local guard. We'd only made a couple of blocks and had emerged from a narrow street. It opened into a small Y shaped courtyard dominated by a frozen fountain topped by an ice-rimed statue of a pair of Rris tearing each other's throats out. Sheer walls overshadowed the courtyard, three story buildings relegating the street to cold shadow. And as we stepped into the courtyard the crowd melted away and we found ourselves facing some Rris who didn't step aside.
     There were half a dozen of them, all wearing a plain uniform of leather tunic and breastplates with a blue and beige sigil on them, so they were most likely genuine. For a moment I was relieved, but that feeling didn't last long. Those uniforms were pretty battered and stained, and beneath them their wearers were a ratty, hungry-looking bunch.
     One of them, a scowling officer, stalked forward and looked from Hesk to Makepeace. "This is yours?"
     "Sir," Makepeace started to say brightly. "We're from..."
     The officer's scowl didn't change. "What the rot is it?" he interrupted. I didn't have a good feeling about this.
     "Sir, a guest of his highness in Shattered..."
     "Rot you, don't give me that [patter]. When I ask you a question, you give me an answer, do you hear me?"
     Uh-oh, I thought.
     Makepeace's ears went down flat. "Yes, sir. But..."
     "No, you tell me what that thing is; where you came from and what you're doing here blocking the street with your little performance."
     "She told you," I said.
     The scowl vanished, eyes went wide and the ears back. He recoiled a step. "Blood and bone! Is this a joke?" He glared at me, then at Makepeace, "Are you responsible for this?"
     "Other way around," I said and his attention snapped back to me. "We're from Shattered Water, bound for Bluebetter. We were attacked, separated from our caravan. We're looking for assistance."
     The officer still stared, looking as if he were trying to work out if it was a joke or not. Then he twitched and abruptly leveled a finger at Hesk, "You. Are you with these?"
     Hesk must've done some rapid calculation, but there wasn't a second's hesitation when he said, "Ah, no, sir."
     "Then get out of my sight."
     Hesk ducked his head and blurred back the way we'd come. The guard commander's head swung back to us. I met his stare. "We are on Palace business," I said quietly although my heart was starting to hammer. This could go very wrong in all sorts of ways. "We're also under Guild observation..."
     "Enough," he snapped. "You'll be coming with us. Move."
     "Sir," Makepeace tried again. "We have to see..."
     He stepped in close to her and grabbed at her tunic. "You'll see..."
     Then he cut off with a squeak when I caught the hand he'd seized her with, bending it back until he released her. "You don't touch her," I said quietly.
     "Mikah," Makepeace breathed. There were metallic clicks from around us, the sound of flintlocks being cocked. If they fired, they'd be shooting their own. I tightened my grip, squeezing stubby fingers with their claws. He hissed, trying to pull away and I squeezed a bit harder until his hand released Makepeace and she stumbled back, patting at her ruffled throat fur with one hand. Her ears were back and whites showing around her eyes. "Rot, sir, do you ever think about what you're doing?" she panted.
     "Only when it's a good idea," I growled, looked around at the surrounding guards. That didn't look like it'd been one of those. "Get out of here," I hissed.
     "Sir? I..."
     "Go," I told her again.
     She still hesitated.
     The Rris officer bared teeth at me and moved in a way I knew from experience meant he was going to swing at me with his other hand. I tightened my grip and twisted a bit and he forgot about that, snarl turning to a yowl even as I twisted his arm around behind his back. And stepped in behind him, holding him in an armlock that threatened to break something and looking over his shoulder at the rest of his squad. They all had their weapons drawn — blades and a couple of pistols. I was armed, better than they were, but starting a shootout was nothing but a losing game. And from the looks of them, simply surrendering meekly could be just as dangerous.
     "That's an order!"
     "You can't..." she started to protest.
     "Go!" I bellowed, shocking echoes from the walls. The Rris guards recoiled. Makepeace bolted, tearing back into an alley with a rattle of claws on cobblestone and was gone. I kept my grip on the officer, keeping him between me and the rest of the squad who were already circling round. This had escalated quickly.
     "Shall we shoot it?" one of them asked, sighting along the barrel of his smoothbore pistol. The range wasn't long, but the bullets in those things could be unpredictable.
     "Don't! You idiot!" the officer snapped at his troops, trying to twist in my grip. I wrenched his arm, staggering him back a few steps to prevent his trigger-happy goons flanking us.
     "You know you're dead!" he snarled.
     I grinned, not entirely from humor. "Have you thought that through?" I growled as he tried wrenching away again. "I think I can guarantee that if your lord found you'd shot me, being skinned alive would be the least of your worries."
     "High opinion," he hissed.
     "You want to test it?" I hissed back.
     "Let's."
     "You seen anything like me before? Heard of me before? No? Quite rare, a? Rare, as in valuable? Valuable to his highness?"
     "You know nothing of..."
     "Hirht ah Chihiski," I said. "Thin male. Very little sense of humor. I know him and he knows me."
     That sank through. He snarled but stopped struggling. "Hold," he spat at his troops. "Stop pointing those things."
     "Sir?" one of them growled.
     "Lower your rotted guns!"
     They did so. Reluctantly. Looking disappointed and annoyed.
     I reached around and found the butt of the officer's pistol where it was tucked into his bandolier. I yanked it out. The weapon was a flintlock, heavy and as long as my forearm. The handgrip wasn't quite the right size or shape for my hand and the smooth, dark wood looked like black walnut. Parts were embellished with silver: inlays of vine-like traceries, raised curlicues and leaves wrapped up the barrel, baroquely ornate frizzen and hammer. Expensive piece for a guardsman. I held on to it and shoved the officer back toward his squad.
     The officer whipped around, ears back and teeth bared. I looked down at the Rris pistol and thought this is probably a bad idea... Nevertheless, I popped the frizzen pan open and spilled the powder, then flipped the weapon over and held it out by the muzzle. His eyes were pure black as he glared, then reached out a visibly-trembling hand and took the pistol from me, weighing it in his hands.
     "I have this," I said, producing the little piece of official paper. He looked at it, then swiped viciously with one clawed hand. Torn shreds of paper fell. And while I was distracted by that he swung the pistol in a vicious blow that I only just blocked with the forearm armor. He recoiled, looking startled but that distraction had been enough.
     I didn't see which of the others jumped me. There was a terrific blow across the side of my head and I staggered back, the world sloshing to and fro around me. Snarling Rris faces were moving to encircle me, blocking me wherever I turned. A flash of movement made me turn and only just take another blow on my shoulder, the coat taking the worst of it. I retreated, my back against a wall.
     "Sir! Sir!" a voice was yelling.
     And then the officer was leveling another pistol, his ears flat and eyes as black as the muzzle I was staring down.
     "Sir!" There was a blur of movement and almost simultaneously a thundering concussion and gout of sparks and smoke and I instinctively flinched as I was peppered with hot powder and a brick in the wall just over my head shattered and sprayed me with clay. One of the guards had knocked the officer's gun aside and he didn't look happy about it.
     "What are you playing at, you rat-tailed..."
     "Sir, it's the royal seal!"
     A glass-brittle hesitation. "What're you prattling about?"
     The younger trooper held up a torn piece of paper in hand. "This!" he almost wailed. "Sir, it's the royal seal. And the Guild crest! If you shoot it... that might not be good."
     The officer snatched the scrap. Glared at it, then at me. "Where'd you get this?"
     "It was given to me," I said, gritting my teeth and trying to hold it together through fear and pain. My head was hurting — pounding again. Something was trickling down the side of my face. "By Hirht ah Chihiski. With Mediator Guild support."
     His eyes were black pits, his ears back flat against his head. But those words got through. "A forgery..." he muttered.
     "It'd be a good one, sir," the trooper said. "But who would forge a Guild seal? Sir, if it's valuable, there could be a reward? A bounty?"
     Some sort of conflict was going on in the officer, but eventually caution won out. Or perhaps greed. He spat a furious hiss and pointed at me with the gun. "Take it back to the station. Lock it. Secure."
     "Sir," other guards acknowledged, fingering their weapons.
     "And you," the officer jabbed a claw at the younger trooper, teeth bared in a snarl. "You rat-tailed vermin eater, you disobey orders like that again, and I will skin you. Now, you get to report this... this thing to the keep. You tell me the verdict. You understand that?"
     "A, sir," the guard said.
     "Get!"
     The Rris got, scurrying away.
     "And you," the officer turned back to me, fingers clenching and unclenching on the grip of his pistol. "You do what I say, you understand that."
     "A," I said quietly, not making any move that could set them off.
     "Irons," he snapped to one of his squad.
     Their cuffs were bulky iron manacles linked with a short bar and were almost too small for my wrists. They managed to squeeze them in and then lock them behind my back. That seemed to calm them down a little, although they all still kept their distance and hands near weapons.
     "Walk," the commander told me, prodding me hard with the end of his musket. Pointless really: the weapon had been discharged and anyway, my coat absorbed that jab. Did he even realize that?
     But I walked, in the direction they indicated. The crowds reformed, spilling into the street to watch the little procession. They kept their distance but I was still uncomfortably aware of all the eyes on me. It was... embarrassing. But still better than lying bleeding out in the gutter. I went quietly and hoped Makepeace had the sense to go to the right people. I was pretty sure she did, but I'd guessed Rris reactions wrong before.
     They didn't take me to the keep, but rather to the local watch house. The building looked like at some time it'd been part of an older round tower, perhaps part of an old wall the town had outgrown. The old fortification had been half-demolished and then the ruins half-rebuilt. Now it was a stump flanked by narrow buildings housing what looked like a bottle shop and a local tinker. The upper levels had glazed window and were covered by red tile roofs. Windows on the lower floor were narrow and barred.
     I had to duck to pass under the lintel, and inside had to stoop under low rafters. Grubby sunlight filtered through grimy panes slotted into the narrow windows. Away in one corner a pot boiled on a black stove. Elsewhere were some cheap benches beside a table strewn with scraps of weapons and armor and food and other detritus. Cots sat in an adjoining chamber. The place smelled of food and smoke and chamberpots. They marched me through, then four of them took me down steep stone stairs barely wide enough for my shoulders. I had an inkling where this was heading, and my fears were confirmed when, in a dingy little vault that was only lit by what light trickled down from upstairs, one of them hauled a heavy wooden door open to reveal a black hole.
     "That's not..." I started to say.
     "In!" a one of them snapped and jabbed with a sword tip. That got past the armor and stabbed my leg and I yelped and staggered as it dug into my thigh. "In," he snarled again.
     I grimaced at the growing burning ache in my leg and half-crouched to limp in through the tiny entrance with my hands cuffed behind my back, trying to see something inside. No point, there was nothing to see. And then the door slammed behind me, bolts scraped into place and the light was gone.
     After some time I was aware that I was alone. I was aware I was cold. I ached. Cuts were making themselves felt, the brand new one on my leg throbbing furiously. Pain thumped through my head in time with my heartbeat. My mouth tasted of blood. Something was trickling down my face from that burning spot on my head where they'd hit me and my pants were also growing damp and sticky around the throbbing stab wound. The cell was bare stone and blackness. From where I sat my feet touched the opposite wall and the roof was just above my head. The darkness reeked of ammonia and shit and dampness and I could only hope the floor was cold packed dirt. I'd been in a place like this before: a real dungeon; a box to stick people in — nothing like the medieval prisons Hollywood depicted. Here they didn't waste money or space on things like bars or bedding. It was just a place to put people and make sure they stayed put. I worked myself into a corner and shivered, cold again. I was learning to really hate winter.
     "That could've gone better," I mumbled, mostly to try to stop myself screaming.
     They hadn't searched me. I found that odd, but then the local guards weren't exactly a highly-trained police force. They dealt with local thugs and riff-raff and concealed firearms weren't standard in a society where any useful firearm required easily-spillable powder. I'd seen a concealable firearm in action before, and they were expensive little one-shot handtooled assassination machines, not something a city guard would have a lot of experience with. Also, they still thought I was a clever animal. Why would you bother searching an animal?
     So, I still had my guns. I could've shot my way out. If I could get out of the cuffs I could still do so. Why hadn't I?
     Because walking into a town and opening fire on the local guard would've been suicide and murder. They'd been a bunch of local cops in a violent society who were used to getting their own way. Probably kept order in their area by being bigger and meaner than the local lowlifes. They thought they were cock of the walk and weren't about to listen to anything some suspicious-looking vagrant and her trained animal had to say. But gunning them down would've gotten very nasty very fast — my coat armor was a last resort that was nowhere close to infallible. And I wasn't sure my drenched ammunition was entirely waterproof. And running wasn't an option for me, not from Rris in their own town. I hoped Makepeace had gotten away. I was relying on her. Again.
     And I hoped she'd gotten the message. I'd shouted at her to get her to leave me. I'd had to. If I'd winked or nodded of given some other high sign that any human from my culture would've understood, it would've meant nothing to her. Perhaps the Rris had some non-verbal cues involving a flicking ear or the lashing of a tail, but I wasn't equipped to do that. All I'd been able to do was shout at her.
     I hoped she hadn't panicked. I hoped she'd understood.
     I slumped back against the wall and sank down. My arms were still manacled behind me. And these things weren't like handcuffs: they were heavy and tight and joined with a short bit of metal so the trick of working them under your butt wouldn't work. Even if it did, then what? I didn't have anything to pick the lock, and I'd still be locked away in a cell behind a heavy door.
     I sighed, shuddered from cold, exhaustion and the come-down from an adrenaline rush. More bruises and lacerations were making themselves felt. My head hurt: a pain that thumped along with my pulse. What was happening? What'd happened to the others? Were they on their way here? Or had they turned back? Or had...
     "Oh, god, Chihirae, you'd better be okay..."
     I didn't want to think about that; not about what the worst that could happen was. When I closed my eyes it was just as dark, but I got to watch the purple flashes in time with my heartbeat.

There were noises. For a moment I was confused: when I opened my eyes I still couldn't see anything. I wondered if I was still asleep. But I hurt and ached and just hurt some more too much for that.
     The sounds got louder. Shouting, in alien tongues that got closer. A flickering line of red-orange light down near the floor over by the door grew brighter even as voices snarled and spat at one another. Metal rattled and grated and then light flooded in. I winced and squinted against the glare of a single little lamp that effectively blinded me.
     "Oh, rot me," I heard someone hiss. "That's it?"
     "A. And you heard him, it's not an 'it'."
     "How do we..."
     "Sir? Can you hear me? Sir?"
     "I hear you," I said in a croak that sounded like a strangled frog.
     "You... Rot! His Lordship sent me. I'm here to get you out, sir. Can you... bone and plague, can you walk?"
     I was sore and stiff and my hands were numb in the squeeze of manacles intended for smaller limbs. My leg sent stabbing messages of protest when I tried to get up. "Help him," I heard a Rris voice snap. "Ware your claws!" Two Rris eclipsed the light as they ducked in through the tiny door and then there were hands helping me out into the vault now crowded with strange Rris wearing armor a sight cleaner and better maintained than the guards. The wound in my thigh sent pulses of pain shooting up and down and when I tried to straighten up I could almost hear my spine crackling.
     "Sir?" one of the Rris, an officer, took my arm and promptly discovered the hardware. "Irons? Who's got the keys to these? Find them!"
     Rris hurried up the stairs. There was shouting.
     "Sir," the Rris officer said, "are you all right?"
     "That is a really stupid question," I said.
     "Sir?"
     "I've been better," I said and tried to focus. "Did Makepeace send you?"
     "Who?" he looked puzzled. Another Rris dropped down the stairs in a springing leap, brandishing a ring clanking with keys. The officer grabbed them. "His Lordship sent me," he said as he got behind me with the keys, trying them in the manacles. "We got the report of what these offal-takers had found. There was only one thing it could be."
     The lock clanked and the manacles dropped away. I gasped with relief, wringing my hands.
     "You're not all right," the officer growled.
     There were lurid bruises on each wrist. Something to match the marks on my chest and head. They were severely uncomfortable. The stab wound in my leg was worse: that was stiffening up. My pants were black with sticky blood that'd soaked into the material, matting it to my leg. I couldn't put weight on it. The newcomers had to help me up the stairs.
     "Carefully," the officer said as I gritted my teeth, each step sending pain lancing up.
     "I... can manage," I gasped.
     The guardroom in the watchhouse was crowded. The newcomers outnumbered the original watchmen who were bunched up in their sleeping quarters. They weren't armed anymore and the guards standing at the door looked alert, if a bit confused. They stared when I emerged from the basement. The local watch officer stalked over, looking furious.
     "I told you it attacked us!" he snarled. "It was defense!"
     "Doesn't mean llama spit, Asessi," the officer from the keep snarled back. "His lordship almost choked on his fish when he heard mention of it. He's not going to be pleased to see what you've done."
     "What would you have done?! It attacked..."
     The officer flattened his ears. "Listen, you [something] [something]! For a start I wouldn't have been trying to shake the dust out of someone who looked like they were lost. That's what it was, wasn't it? Of course it was. I know this one wouldn't attack you without a rotted good reason, and you gave him one. You've been getting away with this because you've usually chased the mangy stragglers and actually kept their numbers down. Nobody of any note had any complaints. Now, you've made a mistake. A rotted huge mistake. And this time his lordship has noticed! His highness will notice! You'll be lucky you don't start as new career as a matched leather helm and bow string! Understand?!"
     The guard faced into the force-five yowling tirade with eyes wide, his ears back. For a second it looked like he was stupid enough to argue back. Just for a second, then he clamped his jaws shut and just looked furious and frustrated and frightened.
     "So you can learn," the officer hissed. "Keep your mouth shut and you might keep your mangy hide. Now, was there anything else you neglected to mention?"
     "No," the other choked. "Sir."
     The officer turned back to me. "Apologies, sir. Sincerest apologies. Is there anything else? Did they take anything of yours?"
     "No."
     "Then we should go. There won't be any more interruptions, will there."
     The guard was trembling. Rage or fear, I didn't know. Didn't care.
     "Sir, the report did mention a lady," the officer said as he led the way outside. "Would you know her whereabouts?"
     I hesitated. "I thought she went to the keep."
     His muzzle creased a bit. "No, sir," he waved a negative. "The first we heard of this was the runner from here."
     "Oh," I said. If she hadn't gone there, then where...
     "You are limping quite badly, sir. Would you prefer to ride?"
     There were more guards outside, both mounted and on foot. I eyed the elk. "I don't ride very well," I said, being perhaps a bit generous in my abilities. So he simply commandeered a wagon from an annoyed merchant. I sat amongst sacks of grain in the back and shivered. My head was still throbbing and harsh winter sunlight didn't help matters, tightening a vice behind my eyes. Guards on elk and foot escorted us, ranging ahead and behind. Other traffic on the streets was just told to get the hell out of the way.
     The officer perched himself on the wagon rail, staring at me as we rattled through the winding streets.
     "You said you don't know where the other is," he finally said.
     "No, sir," I said tiredly. "We just arrived here. We were trying to get to the keep. They... those guards stopped us and wouldn't listen. She ran. I don't know where."
     "Huhn," he rumbled. "Why were you walking through the docks anyway? Why were you alone? We were told to expect visitors from the capitol, but nobody mentioned you. And certainly not by river at this time of year."
     "Sir, we were attacked. Before we reached here. We were coming from Shattered Water. We were attacked and separated from the rest. Can you send someone. Soldiers. They need help."
     He cocked his head. "Tell his lordship. I was told to bring you, whatever the cost."
     I wondered if that was a good thing. "He knows I am considered... valuable?"
     He chittered slightly. "He knows. We have met, you know."
     I looked again at him again: face covered with tawny and grey fur, amber eyes, tall tufted ears. "Have we? I'm afraid I don't recall."
     "Perhaps I should say I have seen you, rather than we have met. About a year ago, in Shattered Water. A function at the palace that my lord attended. I was merely entourage, but we certainly saw you. A lot of people saw you."
     "So I've heard," I said.
     "By the noise he made he doesn't want anything to happen to you," he growled. "King's business, a? His lordship thought so. That girl was your handler? Your teacher?"
     I shivered, sighed. "No. Not like that. Just a child who got caught up in things she shouldn't have."
     "Huhn," he cocked his head and looked at the street ahead as we rounded a corner. Sunlight caught the polished steel of his armor, setting it gleaming like a mirror, reflecting light and sky and funhouse versions of the surrounding buildings. "Why'd she leave you?"
     "I told her to."
     "What? Why?"
     "I thought she'd get help. Go to the keep."
     He waved a negative. "We just got a report that there'd been a disturbance and they'd caught... well... you."
     Then where'd she gone? Had she jumped into more trouble? And there was something else that was bugging me, but my head was really pounding and didn't want to think properly. I closed my eyes but the swaying of the cart made things worse. The officer jumped back with a snarl as I convulsively puked the meager contents of my stomach across the sacks. It didn't really help. "You're ill," he said.
     "My head," I grimaced through clenched teeth. "I think they hit me harder than I thought."
     His ears laid back. "Rot. Hai, Chask!" he yelled at one his troops. "Ride ahead and get a physician waiting for us. Go! And driver, you've got a whip, use it!"
     The Rris merchant up on the driver's bench lashed his tail in annoyance, but did as he was told. It really wasn't much faster, but the jolting and swaying seemed disproportionately worse. I suffered it as best I could, not wanting to think about what might be waiting for me in the hands of unknown Rris ahead.

Summer Break's keep was built along the same general concept as other old Rris fortresses I'd seen. It had the same towers, the same high stone walls and heavy gates, but it was no longer the strongpoint in the River defenses.
     There were in fact two fortifications on the river side of town. The keep was one of them, set further back from the shore. It was constructed in the style of older fortifications, designed before the development of guns that could turn traditional walls to rubble. It had the gothic look of a traditional castle, with tall, whitewashed vertical walls around a donjon and towers that overtopped the river fort. The other was set right at the water's edge and was unmistakably a more modern construct: a squat, heavy fortress with thick walls steeply sloped against artillery and set in a position where its guns commandeered the entire stretch of river.
     Both structures were enveloped by the same stone curtain walls. Seen from high above the form would have vaguely resembled a giant hourglass, with a keep in each endpiece. The pinch might have been a training ground at some point, now it was a garden in the Rris style: wild trees and long grass that looked deliberately untended, buried in white and winter.
     They took me to the old keep: the imposing old-style fort with the tall walls and towers. Once it had been a serious fortress, now it showed the trappings of a residence. Walls that had been solid stone with slit windows were now dotted with ornate stonework and glazed panes. Colorful flags were stirring listlessly against a cloud-daubed sky: the colors of Land of Water and other standards of the local lord or various guilds.
     I wasn't in any mood or condition for sightseeing. The wagon ground to a halt at the front doors and soldiers bustled around, forming a cordon around the back of the cart, staring. There were mutterings in the back ranks. I clambered down, moving slowly and carefully on my sore leg. The officer gave orders for a couple to help me. They didn't move. He snarled them again and they snapped orders and a couple moved, uncertainly. If they had their claws out when they took my arms I couldn't feel it through my coat.
     Other guards stayed close. I'd thought that they were there to catch me if I fell; later realized they were probably there to catch me if I ran. Which would have been laughable if my head hadn't been spinning and splitting from the glare of light off snow. I negotiated the front steps and the gloom of the front hall came as both a relief and a disorientation: I was faced with a sudden crowd. Rris converged on me and my escorts. In my battered condition I was faced with alien features, raised voices, questions and demands swirling around and I felt like I was going to throw up again on the gold-inlaid mosaic floor as Rris snarled at me and each other.
     "Enough of this!" a voice yowled, drowning them out. Everyone got quiet and then the crowd dissipated, skittering away like water off a hot griddle. A newcomer stalked through the foyer, walking as if he owned the place. A big Rris, in finely cut grey and green. Bright enamel trim glittered blue and silver. Everyone else got out of his way as he approached, staring intently at me. My escort hurried over to him, ducked his head and had some quiet words. Once he touched the side of his head while gesturing at me. I touched my own temple. That really hurt. I stared at the red mess smeared on my fingertips.
     "Injured?" I heard the newcomer say and look at me. "Take him through to the physician's study. She's getting her equipment ready." He stalked off, expecting we'd follow.
     The guards helped me limp along — through the foyer with its fine wood and stonework, along a hall painted in gilt murals. Through a door paneled with beaten copper disks and into warmth and carpeted floors. Sunlight spilled in through narrow windows, fractured into broken light by the little diamond-shaped bulls-eye panes. A fire blazed in a hearth, throwing out heat. There were pots hanging there, the lids jangling as something boiled. Shelves covered the stone walls behind the desk, filled with books and scrolls, stacks of tally sticks, more rows of copper pots and pans and serried ranks of many-colored glass bottles of all shapes and sizes. A floor to ceiling cabinet was fronted with little drawers, hundreds of them, ranging in size from about shoebox size right down to little matchbook sized slots. Behind the warped glass of another cabinet the glass eyes of squirrels, rabbits, marmosets, mice, and other small inoffensive creatures stared out at the room.
     There was a low bench there, a makeshift examination table covered with padded green leather onto which I gratefully folded and the guards retreated to the door.
     "Mikah?" The newcomer was asking me. "Mikah?"
     "Ah, yes... sir."
     "How are you doing? You took a nasty knock to the head there."
     "I... I'm not sure," I said, grimaced. "Had worse."
     His muzzle ticked. "I regret the way you were treated. That was a mistake."
     I blinked at him, not sure what he wanted me to say to that.
     "Huhn, I'm Ghaesir ah Sitha," he continued after the awkward pause. "Lord of Summer Breaks. I want to welcome you, I only wish it could be under more pleasant circumstances. We were told to be expecting visitors from Shattered Water, but I have to say weren't expecting you in person. Nor were we expecting you to come alone by the river route. I was told there was trouble. What happened?"
     I looked from his face to the officer, the troops in the background. "Sir," I said. "We were on the road. We were attacked."
     He cocked his head. "Where? What happened?"
     Where the hell was it? "Upstream somewhere. It was just out of Thieves Always Return. There was a stone bridge. I don't know exactly what happened. There was an explosion and then I was in the river. We made it here."
     "We?"
     "I was with an associate."
     A crease in his muzzle. "How long ago?"
     I tried to think. "Was... yesterday afternoon?" Was that all? It felt like it'd been days ago.
     Ah Sitha looked at the guard commander. "Take a troop. Find out what happened. Fast."
     "Sir," the officer acknowledged and was gone, accreting guards as he went.
     The lord turned back to me, hands behind his back and the tip of his tail flicking. "We'll do what we can," he said. "That head of yours needs attention. My personal physician can tend to you. She's been studying some of the medical teachings you've introduced and might be able to help."
     "Thank you, sir," I said.
     "And later, we shall talk."
     "Yes, sir," I acknowledged as he stalked out.
     I sagged. Yeah, I'll look forward to that. How do you tell a Rris Lord you can't tell him anything? Very carefully, that's how. And I was starting to realize that he had me in his control and no-one else knew I was here.
     Behind me, Rris were talking in quiet voices, then a hand touched my head. "A nastylooking wound, that one. Head wounds are always like that — worse than it looks. Headache? Disorientation? Bright light is uncomfortable?"
     "A," I confirmed.
     "Huhn," the Rris mused. "If you're like us, then perhaps a minor [concussion] there. Here, this is cold."
     It was. A freezing cold bundle was pressed against my head. I gasped.
     "A. Hold it there. It will help the swelling. And I think I will have to sew that cut. By the way, I'm his lordship's physician. My name is Maithris."

The odds of meeting another Rris with that name weren't outlandish. It wasn't an uncommon name. Another physician with the same name, in that area, at that time, that wasn't nearly so likely. So I made a fool of myself by over-reacting: dropping the ice-pack as I twisted wildly to look up at a complete stranger. The grey-muzzled female tending trying to thread a needle flinched back, white rims showing around her eyes. "Sir?"
     "Oh," I croaked. "I thought... is that a common name?"
     She looked taken aback. "It's not uncommon."
     "Another physician with that name? Around here?"
     "Ah, not that I know of, sir. Is there a problem?"
     "I thought... no, no problem."
     "Yes, sir. If you could sit still, please..."
     She worked quickly and efficiently. She checked the contents of the boiling pots while the ice numbed my temple, adding some implements to a pot, taking one off and setting another one to heating in its place. She washed her hands thoroughly before she started working, cleaning the wound, washing it with alcohol and dusting it with sulfur. She dipped the needle and thread in alcohol then leaned over and went to work on my head. I tried to hold still. It didn't hurt. The pain was secondary to the feeling of the rough thread being drawn through. That was... uncomfortable.
     "Finish," she finally said. "That will have to come out in a few days. Now... that leg. Will you please remove this coat, sir? It would simplify matters."
     The room was warm enough and the thing was heavy. I winced as I extricated myself from the heavy leather overcoat, ribs and bruises protesting. She handed it off to a servant who almost dropped it before getting a good grip. Then she had me lay back and proceeded to go over the other scratches and gouges I'd collected, especially the nasty lacerations on my leg.
     "Huh," she growled, poking at the cut, clotted and tangled with my pants.
     I winced "Is that supposed to concern me?"
     "You should be. Stab wound. Never good with clothes. Pushes fabric into the wounds. Gets dirty." She straightened and eyed me. "From what I've heard, you know this."
     "A," I said. "And you're boiling tools. Cleaning things. That's good."
     She frowned. "I'm sure you'll let me know if I do something wrong."
     I'd been on the receiving end of that tone before. I knew it. "I'll just scream quietly, a?"
     "That would be appreciated, sir," she said. "I'll have to cut those pants and clean it. Hold still, please."
     I lay back while she worked, grimacing at the tugging and stinging as she washed the congealing gore away. It got worse after that, as she cleaned the wound itself. I clenched my teeth and my fists, tried visualizing a pure blue sphere, studying immaterial details in the room, anything to take my mind off what she was doing.
     Light coming in the windows was changing, softening to twilight. Inside, a velvet gloom grew, shadows lengthened and blended. Polished floors and intricate rugs danced and moved as firelight ebbed and flowed, glinted on dead glass eyes; washed across burnished copper pans; woke sharp highlights from the curves and lines of bottles ranked on the shelves. A low desk sat over by the window, evening light setting the milky globe of an expensive-looking lamp to glowing rose. Sets of gold-nibbed pens ranked in a holder. Bottles of ink. Ornate bars across the window threw twisted shadows across the room.
     "A few stitches," she said. "This will be uncomfortable. Can you hold still?"
     "A," I nodded.
     She gave me another uncertain look and then took up her needle and thread again. Hesitated.
     "Sir," she started. "May I ask you something?"
     "You're the one with the sharp bit of metal."
     She looked confused.
     "I mean: go ahead."
     "Thank you, sir. There were some items in the Guild journals that came from Shattered Water. They were attributed to you. Is that true?"
     "I don't know what they have said. Possibly."
     "It is interesting material. It seems to work. But there're only fragments of information: cleaning and boiling tools; infection spread by touching, breathing, dirt; keeping waste away from drinking water... but very little about medicines or cures or surgery."
     I sighed. "I'm sorry, but my own knowledge and information there is limited. Also, medicines for my kind can be poison for Rris... and the other way around. And finally the Mediator Guild has restrictions on some information."
     "Mediators?"
     "A. Until they know just what sort of effects the information will have."
     "I... understand, sir," she said politely.
     "Don't worry — I don't either," I sighed.
     She flicked her ears. "Thank you, sir. Now, I'm afraid this will probably hurt."
     It did. A few stitches. Pushing a needle through bruised skin. I tried to keep my promise.
     "There," she finally said through the ringing in my ears and I unclenched my fists, feeling sweat cooling on my forehead. "Keep it clean. Rinse with alcohol. Watch for infection. Otherwise, that... should heal. Cut them out in a few days. You'll have a few more scars. Not much more I can do except recommend rest."
     "He is all right?" another voice asked. Both the doctor and I flinched. The local lord was standing over by the open door. How long had he been there?
     "Now, I think so, sir," the doctor said "He should rest. He's had a [something] to the head. It's left a cut and bruising, maybe a mild [concussion]. I don't know how that will affect... something like him, but it could cause confusion, [something]."
     "Thank you, doctor."
     She ducked her head and started collecting her bag. "Ah, and his leg has a nasty cut. Not too deep, but I've cleaned it and put a couple of stitches in. And I think he's exhausted. And cold. Normally I would say he shouldn't sleep with a head wound like that, but I think he needs rest and warmth and food."
     "Thank you, doctor," Ghaesir ah Sitha repeated tersely. The doctor's ears twitched back and she hurried out. A guard closed the door behind her and took station beside it. Armed with a blade, but it was peace-tied. Sitha seemed to consider, then waved his hand. "Wait outside."
     "Sir?"
     "Leave us. Now."
     "Yes, sir," the guard said and retreated.
     "A drink?" Sitha asked me, gesturing to the sideboard. "Wine, I understand you enjoy. Or there is water. Boiled. You do insist on that, don't you?"
     "Water," I grated. "Thank you."
     He stalked over to the sideboard and the shelves. Glass clinked. "You might want to know the ones responsible have been disciplined."
     I really didn't care about that.
     He approached, held out a glass. I hesitated before taking it and hastily cupping it in two hands. I was shaking. He noticed.
     "You sure you're all right?"
     I was exhausted, aching, wearing tattered, stained rags that were all that remained of my clothes. My pants were in shreds, my leg covered with sticky matted blood. "Sir, honestly... I have been better."
     "A," he flicked ears back, obviously not sure quite how to take that. "Your coat is... interesting," he continued. "A winter coat. And we found you were armed," he said and waited for me to answer. I didn't. "You could have defended yourself," he said.
     "No," I took a sip, then drank deeply. The water tasted clear and cool. "I would have just murdered them."
     "But what they did..."
     "Isn't unusual," I interrupted tiredly. "I shoot. They shoot back. If others come by and they see Rris fighting me, who are they going to assist? How many do I have to kill? I don't want that."
     "A," Ah Sitha said thoughtfully and picked up his own glass, swirling the amber fluid — it was probably something a few proof stronger than water. He stood and sipped, his tongue flicking while he watched me.
     "You know I have a lot of questions for you," he said.
     "That does not come as a surprise."
     He flicked an ear. "My biggest concern is — just what do I ask you first? There are so many questions they just crowd each other out of the mind. Commerce or crops? Machinery or business?"
     "I don't think I can be as helpful as you think."
     He chittered. "There are entire countries trying everything to get their claws into you, and you think you aren't important?"
     "I didn't say not important," I pointed out. "There are things I... can't talk about."
     He wrinkled his muzzle into his glass. "The Guild?"
     "A."
     "And if they don't know?"
     Was that a threat? His way of saying that no-one knew where I was? I studied him, trying to glean something in his posture, in his body language. Amber eyes regarded me in return, the pupils dilating in the growing twilight.
     "Then they'll probably find out," I said. "I'm not exactly inconspicuous."
     "Ah," he said. "Your friend. She went to the Guild, didn't she."
     Had she? I hadn't the foggiest idea. "Quite possibly," I said. "They do have an interest."
     He sipped again, obviously thinking things over. "Do you know what you can tell me?"
     "I gave your doctor a few suggestions," I said. "If she follows those and her journals then you should see a reduction in illness and death from bad water, injuries, disease and such."
     "Hmmm?" he didn't sound enthused. "You don't know a way of perhaps turning lead into gold?"
     I almost laughed. "Oh, that's possible."
     "It is?"
     "Yes. At a cost that would be equivalent of about... um... about the construction of ten castles like this one per quarter-claw of gold."
     He stared. "That is expensive gold."
     "Never said it was cost-effective," I said and took another sip of water. "What about a rail line?"
     He cocked his head. "What about one?"
     "Perhaps if someone sometime should propose a rail line being run through your territory, you could do worse than support it."
     "A rail line?" he blinked. "Why would anyone need one of those?"
     "Because eventually it would carry more cargo cheaper than the river and more passengers far faster and safer than the road. From Shattered Water through to Bluebetter. The land is steep and flows the wrong way, so the logical route would be to follow the Trail, and that leads through Summer Breaks."
     He sipped, considering for a while. "Shattered Water to Bluebetter. A daunting undertaking. There would be a lot of construction required."
     "A. A lot of workers needed. A lot of food needed. Supplies and steel and stone and fuel required. If someone was prepared there could be opportunities."
     His muzzle twitched predatorily over his drink. "And I suppose that with goods there would be tariffs. And if land were to be leased rather than sold... There are some interesting possibilities indeed."
     I just inclined my head.
     "And someone is likely to propose this?"
     I waved a shrug. "Stranger things have happened."
     "Indeed," he said again and then his ears pricked up a second before there was a scratch at the door and the latch clicked. The guard sidled in, looking awfully conflicted.
     "What is it?" ah Sitha demanded.
     The guard pulled his head back. "It's the Mediator Guild, sir."
     "The Guild? What do they want?"
     "They're here, sir. The Commissioner is here and wanting to see you. They say it's an important matter."
     His lordship's tail lashed hard, just once. "I think this timing is an answer to the question of where your friend went. You can wait here?"
     "I'm not going anywhere," I said.
     He stepped out, closing the door behind him. For a very short time it was quiet. I flexed my leg and grimaced back at the taxidermy victims on their shelves. My sympathies.
     The quiet didn't last. Within a minute there were raised voices out in the hall, angry Rris yowls raising hard echoes. The door didn't slam open, not quite, but it was thrown back by a Rris in a hurry. Who promptly stopped dead at the first sight of me causing all the others behind to jam up in the threshold. I recognized the Mediator coats, if not the individuals who were staring.
     "Rot, it is him," I heard a voice blurt out.
     And a smaller, ragged and tussled figure wriggled through the crowd. "Sir! Sir" Makepeace cried as she rushed over, staggering to a halt with a look of horror spreading across her face.
     "Hey, Makepeace," I forced a smile. She probably wouldn't notice that aspect of it.
     "Sir?" she sat down beside me, trying to examine the wound on the side of my head. "What happened to you? Are you... Rot, I shouldn't have left you."
     "Don't blame yourself... Ow! Don't touch, please." I couldn't explain, not with the Mediators and the local lord gathering behind her. "Don't worry. It feels worse than it looks and looks worse than it is."
     "It looks pretty bad," she said.
     "Yeah, that's about right," I grimaced. "I'll live. What kept you?"
     Her ears went back. "Trying to find the Hall. Then they wouldn't let me in. Then they wouldn't believe me."
     "Oh. The usual."
     "Ah Sitha," the mediator was saying. "You were intending on informing the Guild of your guest?"
     "Commissioner, I wasn't sure he was real until my guard brought him here. My Physician has only just finished tending to him. You were going to be notified."
     "In the fullness of time, of course."
     "Of course."
     The Mediator turned to me. "You are all right? Are you badly hurt?"
     I was getting tired of that question. "No," I sighed, "they did a very good job of hurting me."
     He looked confused. "I didn't mean that..."
     "I know. As I said: I'll live." I flexed my leg, winced. Should keep it moving so it didn't stiffen up. "She told you what happened?"
     "She told us... quite a tale."
     "Probably true," I said. "You know she's the Shattered Water University representative on this journey? She's got Guild sanction to be with me."
     "Sir!" Makepeace squeaked and laid her ears back under the Commissioner's gaze.
     "She neglected to mention that," he said after a while. "We do, of course, extend all courtesy to the University. You are aware that there are circumstances where Guild necessities do take precedence over those agreements."
     "Is this one of those?" I asked.
     "Sir, with respect," Makepeace ventured to the Mediator. "The Guild can intervene where national interests are at stake. This time it was bandits. Does that require Guild involvement?"
     The Commissioner gestured at me. "I'm afraid that wherever this one is involved, the Guild also has to be. So, yes it does involve us."
     "But how can you be certain this is about him?" Makepeace insisted.
     Something that was almost amusement flickered momentarily across the Mediator's face. "Sitha," he asked the local lord. "You have done something about these reports?"
     "I sent a detachment of House guard," the Lord replied. He was standing stiffly, probably angry but not wanting to show it. "Not two hours ago. By his description it happened at the Hold Store Bridge."
     "About a day's ride then. You haven't heard anything further? Reports of other incidents?"
     "Nothing, Commissioner. Certainly no reports of attacks or bandits."
     "Nor us. And I'd have thought that if there were such on the trail they'd choose easier prey than a caravan with armed soldiers. So," he turned back to Makepeace, "It seems that this group appears from nowhere, well-armed, just in time to attack your people specifically. When you hold the facts up to the light it does seem as if they were after something specific. Your ward here would be the most obvious. So, we are quite certain this is about him."
     Makepeace's ears twitched back and she looked away from his amber stare. The small study was crowded now with the Rris: the Mediators, the lord and his staff crowded around to stare down at me. With the light from outside gone they were just shadows, backlit by the dancing firelight, a gathering of shapes that brought back flashes of night terrors.
     "Sir?" Makepeace asked. I must've reacted.
     "Sorry," I said, shuddering back to the here and now. "Just tired."
     "A," she said quietly and looked up at the locals. "My lords, we haven't slept or eaten for a day. He's injured and exhausted."
     "There are quarters prepared," Sitha said.
     "I'm sure there are," the Commissioner said. "But we will be taking him back to the hall."
     The Rris lord tensed. Insulted or furious or both.
     "How far is the hall?" I asked before someone exploded.
     "Near the gates. Across town," the Commissioner said.
     "Then I hope you brought a carriage along," I said and shifted my leg again, wincing as stitches moved and tugged. "I'm not going to be doing any walking or riding tonight. I'm not sure I'd make it to the front door."
     The Mediator regarded me, the tip of his tail flicking. I guessed they hadn't considered that. "Sitha," the Commissioner said abruptly, "those quarters are secure?"
     "They are perfectly adequate," the local lord said, not quite bristling. "Kings have used them without complaint."
     "Very well. There will be Mediator guards posted though."
     The local lord probably realized that was the best he was going to get and merely offered an inclination of his head. "As you will, Commissioner."
     The trip upstairs to the rooms was uncomfortable, but the rooms were as advertised. There was a private guest wing similar to the annex at home, with full individual suites for important guests and rooms for their staff, all self-contained from the rest of the keep. There was a bedroom with ensuite, closets and staff quarters. Even a kitchen. Lamps and stoves were lit and burning, light gleaming from pale inlaid marble floors and white lacquered panels on the walls. Tapestries of thread and spun metal hung in prominent view and drapes were closed over big windows. Those trimmings hid the original brutal stone architecture so successfully it felt as if you were in a high-class hotel, not a cold stone fort at all.
     Knowledge of my dietary habits had apparently made the rounds. The meat they brought me was overcooked and served along with plenty of bread, vegetables and even outof-season fruits and preserves. There were platters of fine white porcelain with silver utensils and bottles of a Rris wine I was quite partial to. Makepeace joined me. I don't know if she'd been in such accommodation before, but she didn't seem to notice much aside from the food. In fact, between us we demolished enough for a small platoon and all the while the Mediator Commissioner and his staff pressed us on details of the past day.
     His name was Yosith and he was much like most other Mediators I'd met: stiff, formal, not committing to anything until the ramifications are thoroughly considered, debated, and then run through the appropriate committees. He asked questions of me and Makepeace while his secretary took notes. I told him what I could. Makepeace filled in other details. I hadn't known she'd had to persuade the villagers not to dump us back into the river and just keep what they had.
     When we were finally done we sat at the low table amidst the ruins of the meal. It was late. Or perhaps early. Quiet and efficient servants had been around replacing the lamps. I was full and sore and exhausted. Finally Yosith waved a curt gesture to his secretary who closed her notebook and started putting her inks and pens and nibs away. "That's all for tonight," he said. "I think you both need to rest. An honor to meet you both."
     "Thank you, sir," both Makepeace and I inclined our heads politely as he stood.
     "One thing," he said at the door. "Makepeace, you did everyone a great service with your actions. You have the guild's gratitude. Your superiors will receive a letter noting such."
     She looked startled. "Thank you, sir."
     They finally left us. "That's a good thing, is it?" I asked.
     "A," she said, looked thoughtful and then smiled. "A. Very good."
     "Good to hear," I said. "And now, I am going to bed before I pass out here."
     Easier said than done. Getting up from a cushion on the floor when your leg doesn't want to play nice isn't a painless experience. Makepeace was there before I could fall on my face, helping me up.
     "Thanks," I said. "Again."
     "It's nothing, sir," she said and stayed by me as I limped through to the bedroom.
     "It is," I said. "Look, sorry I had to scare you down in town, but if they'd taken us both then we might've ended up here without anyone knowing about it. I don't know his lordship well enough... I don't know if he'd take advantage of that, but..."
     "Better take the safer road, a?" she said. "Yes, sir. I understand."
     The bedroom was as well appointed as the rest of the suite, but I was mostly interested in the bed. Still, I paused. Makepeace regarded me, expression earnest and perhaps a little worried. "Makepeace, you've saved my life. Maybe more than once. I... owe you."
     Her ears fluttered. "Sir, that's not necessary."
     "Maybe," I shrugged and absently patted her shoulder. "But repaying that will make me feel better. If there's anything I can do, you ask me. I'll try to make it happen. A?"
     Now her gaze flitted around, not quite meeting mine. "I... A, sir. Thank you, sir." She hesitated a few heartbeats, still now quite looking at me, as if expecting something, then she just ducked her head. "Thank you, sir. Sleep well, sir."
     Then she hurried off. I heard her claws ticking on the marble and shook my head. Winced. Had I said something wrong? Had I insulted her? That thought still concerned me as I sat down on the bed and laid back into soft sheets and furs, staring up at a ceiling that was a canopy of tiny, white porcelain leaves. That was the last thought I had that night.

I remember the dreams were bad, but I can't remember exactly what they were. Something about bars of ice and a pure black sky and bone-white trees and scrambling through small dark places trying to get somewhere. It was the noise that half-woke me. I floundered into consciousness, not sure what was real and what were remnants of nightmares: doors were slamming, inhuman sounds yowling and shouting in the darkness. Out in the hall I could see lights glimmering, shadows moving across walls before they were eclipsed by a mass of pointy-eared silhouettes filling the doorway. My hands clenched, wanting to reach for a weapon but there was nothing...
     "Mikah?" someone said, then: "Mikah!"
     There was abrupt motion in the darkness, something rushing across the room towards me and I just had time to flinch before the bed bounced and there was someone close to me. "Are you all right? Rot, you! We were worried and you were here all the time..."
     Lights came into the room, along with Rris I knew. Chaeitch was looking ragged, a bandaged ear and a lamp in hand. Rraerch was carrying another — Rohinia and Jenes'ahn both had their hands full with pistols and knives. There were guards behind them, both our own and local house guards. Pushed to the back behind them I saw Makepeace's worried face, but foremost of all, Chihirae was leaning close with a frightened look.
     "What happened? Where've you been?" she demanded as she touched the bandages on my leg, then almost touched the side of my head. "Pestilence and plague! You look like you've been beaten half to death! Are you all right? Are..."
     She shut up with a squeak when I grabbed her and hugged her. Hard and close. For a split second she went rigid and then slowly relaxed, bumping her head against me.
     "I was worried," I whispered into a tufted ear before easing back on the hug. She twitched ruffled fur. "I'm fine," I said. "What about you?"
     "I'm... all right," she said. In the room behind her expressions varied from startled to amused to exasperated. One of those exasperated expressions stalked up behind Chihirae with her partner alongside.
     "Are you done?" was the first thing Jenes'ahn said.
     "Good to see you too," I said. "Is everyone okay? What happened?"
     She huffed, tail lashing, but Rohinia stepped in and calmly said, "We lost a few more people. What about you? Are you badly hurt?"
     "A few bruises," I said. "Who? How many? What happened?"
     "Your head. Your leg..."
     "Just a cut... okay, a stab..."
     "Stab?!" Chihirae yelped.
     "Hey, It's not too bad," I assured her. "They just poked me. The doctor cleaned it up. See?" I stood. In my torn clothes I was as ragged as the tired and dirty and disheveled Rris clustered in the hallway. "Chaeitch, your ear..."
     "Musket ball nicked it," he said and his good ear twitched and he grimaced. "Like you, just sore."
     Thank god. "How many..."
     "Eight," Rohinia said quietly.
     "And will someone tell me what happened?"
     "You don't know?"
     "I think there was an explosion, then a lot of water. Apart from that, no."
     He gave me a look that bled exhaustion. "Very well, we have some things to catch up on."
     "Now? Tonight?"
     "A," he said. "Tonight. Jenes'ahn, go and reassure his lordship that all's in hand. Commander, get your troops sorted. Guards on door, apartments above us and below windows. Short shifts. Try to get some of them rested first."
     "A, sir," our guard commander acknowledged and went to make it happen.
     "Now, Mikah," Rohinia jerked his head toward the door. "Let's go through to the lounge and you can tell us where the rot you've been."

At least I'd had a few hours of sleep, because it was a long night. In the living area the fire had died to a mountain of embers. Those exploded into sparks when wood was heaped on them. Rraerch, Chaeitch, the Mediators, the guard commander and Makepeace gathered around. Our own staff bustled about and somehow managed to produce food for them: hot wine, milk and blood and honey, sandwiches. Chihirae sat close by me while they ate, close enough I could feel her muscles twitching at every sudden voice or noise. I wanted to ask her, but wasn't going to. Not there with the others present.
     They all ate wearily, mechanically, lapping fluids and champing loudly while I told my tale. Chihirae didn't look at me. I could see her tense as I spoke, flinch when I mentioned a detail. I toned it down from there.
     Then Makepeace took her turn. There were more details there I didn't know about: She'd almost been arrested herself in her efforts to make someone in the Guild hall listen. She hadn't mentioned that earlier when the local Mediator Commissioner had been present. But now, with our Mediators, she was telling everything, even though they were part of the same organization.
     When we were done Rohinia had a few quiet words with his partner, then told us, "That's all for now. Commander, we have to finish things at the hall. The rest of you, you should get some rest."
     No arguments. He and the commander stalked out. Makepeace drifted out on their heels, yawning hugely. I touched Chihirae's arm, very carefully. "Chi? Do you want..."
     "No, Mikah," she said quietly. "If it's all the same, I'd just like to be alone."
     "A," I nodded and watched her slowly walk to the door where Jenes'ahn had paused, watching. A servant directed her to one of the spare rooms. I sat there, listened to the sound of a distant door closing. I bit my lip. It was going wrong and I didn't know how this was going to play out.
     "She's frightened." Chaeitch said quietly. He and Rraerch were still sitting, watching me.
     "I understand that," I said. "This... wasn't supposed to happen. They said it wouldn't."
     "Yet here we are," he said philosophically.
     "What happened?"
     "At the bridge?" he asked.
     "No, at the stupid question convention. Of course at the bridge!"
     "A," he sighed and then filled in the blanks.
     The explosion had been the first blow. It'd collapsed that last span of the bridge, taking the carriage, myself and Makepeace, the driver and two guards with it. The group was cut: the forward party and scouts were on one side, the rear guard and the rest of the carriages on the back. That was where they hit. From the rear, while our guards were bottlenecked on the bridge and their attention was focused on the chaos at the front.
     "They'd been concealed in the trees," Chaeitch told me in a quiet voice, barely audible above the crackling of the logs in the fire. "We'd gone right past them. They hit hard. Volleyed and killed three in the first seconds." He sighed and picked up a half-empty wineglass, swirling the dregs. "They had surprise, our backs and a quarter of our forces on the other side of the river. A musket ball did this," he gestured at the bandage around his head. "The guard beside Chihirae wasn't as fortunate... one caught her a bit lower. Chihirae got covered in... bits. It shook her quite badly."
     "Oh," I said. Understanding a bit more. "But she is all right?"
     "Not physically hurt," Rraerch said quietly. "She's shaken though. She's confused and frightened. I don't blame her."
     Chaeitch lapped at the wine and then licked his chops. "They should've cut us to pieces," he said simply.
     "Why didn't they?"
     "Because they made mistakes," Rraerch said, ears drooping. "And they couldn't get close enough. And our guns are better. And luck. Probably, more luck."
     "The bomb went off early," said Chaeitch and frowned. "We think. If it'd been half a minute later half our forces would have been across. They could've picked us off in detail."
     I struggled to imagine that. An IED... here? "How did they plant that? Our scouts didn't see it. If there was a fuse or someone lighting..."
     "It was under the flagstones," Chaeitch said and made gestures with his hands. "Lift the flagstones, remove some fill and there's room. And there was no fuse. I'm guessing clockwork."
     "Clockwork?"
     "A," he gestured affirmative. "Clockwork timer with a flintlock mechanism — like a gun. It can be triggered by a timer or trip wire. They're delicate and very expensive."
     Which said a bit more about our assailants.
     "The bomb wasn't big, but enough to take out the keystones. The arch just... crumbled and took you with it. The thing is, I don't think they intended that. I think they'd want you alive."
     "Destroying a bridge I'm on doesn't seem like the way to go about that."
     "Huhn," he scratched his muzzle. "That's why I think it was a mistake. Something went wrong. The past days you'd been riding further back. If you had been there — if the bomb had gone off a half-minute later things might have been different. Cut the bridge with at least half of our forces on the wrong side. They could grab you and be away before we could get across."
     "Lot of if's," I said. "It sounds... odd."
     "Odd?"
     "It's too complicated," I said. "Too many things that could go wrong and did."
     Chaeitch glanced at Jenes'ahn, listening quietly. "A," he said. "That's actually what the Mediators said."
     I also looked at the Mediator. She set her mask in place, although it seemed to falter a bit. Tired? "You did?" I asked. "Why?"
     "Possibly the same reason you did," Jenes'ahn said, waved her hand in a vague, noncommittal manner. "Those attacks were too complicated. They were something an amateur would think up — they might sound impressive, but they were over-planned: too much chance for something to go wrong."
     "They seemed dangerous enough," I said.
     "No," she said. "Those fighters were professional enough. But whoever was leading them... it's too early to say."
     "Too late for over a dozen of our people," I said. "If you know something, shouldn't you tell us?"
     "Mikah..." Rraerch sighed.
     Jenes'ahn blinked at me, slowly. "We don't have anything we can bite. Anything at this time would simply be... speculation. False rumors cause their own problems."
     I grimaced. "And no information leaves us stumbling in the dark. Dammit! She came along because I said it would be safe. You made a liar out of me and more importantly she's been dragged into something she shouldn't have any part in. You knew something was wrong! You knew there might be trouble! You didn't tell me and because of that innocent people have been hurt!"
     "You're worried about the teacher?"
     "Of course I'm worried about her!" I exploded. "I'm worried about her; I'm worried about us. And you're not telling us anything! You do have an idea of who's behind this, don't you. Are they going to chase us all the way to Red Leaves? What about back again? We're going to be running all the time?"
     Jenes'ahn's amber eyes flickered in the firelight. "I've told you all we know. Beyond that there's nothing I can say."
     "You..."
     "She's going to be all right, Mikah," Rraerch interjected, calm tones just speaking over me. The other Rris looked at her and she just leaned forward toward me. "She's frightened," she said. "She's just thinking things over."
     I slumped back.
     "Go and get some sleep," Rraerch said. "It'll help."
     I looked at Chaeitch. He waved a shrug. "It's good advice. There's nothing we can do at the moment. We'll be here for a day so there'll be time."
     The anger drained. The Rris regarded me as I looked at them, from one to another. Inhuman and — even after my time here — inscrutable. I couldn't read exactly what they were thinking. Humans probably would have transmitted something in body language, microgestures, any of a thousand things that my subconscious was programmed to read. With these folk, those signals were the end of a different evolution. Like a VHF set trying to pick up a UHF signal: the signals were there but the receiver simply wasn't designed to read them. And I was too tired and too sore to focus and try and brute-force my way through.
     "Good advice?" I asked.
     "A," he said.
     Those earnest feline faces watched with what might have been traces of concern as I clambered awkwardly to my feet and retreated to the gloom of the bedroom.
     A single little lamp with a milky globular mantle that smelled like it was burning kerosene threw enough light to beat back the edges of the darkness, but not much more. So in half-darkness I stripped off the rags and then started to snuff the lamp, then hesitated. I left it burning as I fumbled my way into bed. The bed was cold, but the sheets were heavy and clean and didn't smell of Rris or have a coating of shed fur or hungry parasites. I lay there, watching the yin-yang compliments of shadows and light dancing across the walls and ceiling. At that time, while I reviewed recent events and played out options, I didn't feel like facing utter darkness.

I woke with a start and the crawling feeling that something was wrong. The lamp had been burning. Now, it was dark. Almost pitch black and skin-prickling cold. A glimmering thread of light delineated the door but otherwise I couldn't see a thing. Still, something had woken me. Movement. The weight of someone else shifting carefully on the bed. Every muscle in my body seemed to twitch at the same time in a uncoordinated spasm of fright.
     "It's Chihirae," a voice murmured. "Sorry. It's all right."
     "What... ?" I slurred, sleep-drunk and still jangled by the adrenaline surge.
     A lithe, warm, and furry body slipped under the sheets, nuzzling up against me. "I thought... you might want some company. You asked before and I... I wasn't thinking."
     I lay there, drawing slow breaths, feeling my leg throbbing and getting my heartbeat settled down again. She could feel that, a hand laid flat on my chest probably feeling the hammering. The sensation of relief that she'd come back was almost palpable, but one treacherous immediate thought swam just below the surface.
     "You do, don't you?" she ventured, a low growling in the darkness.
     "Should I be asking you that?" I said
     "Mikah?"
     "You were upset before. Did... they talk to you?"
     A quiet pause before she answered: "She did. A. She said you were concerned. By what I did. I didn't want you to be."
     Oh, God. That was... it twisted everything the wrong ways for the wrong reasons. If this, then do that. Alien cognition seeking for a solution to what they perceived as a binary problem. "Chihirae, that's..."
     "You don't want me here?" Inflection in that question. It could've been uncertainty or hurt, context didn't tell me much.
     "I do. I really do. But not because they told you to; because they think it's what I want. That's not good for anyone."
     She shivered. I could feel that. Her feet were cold, as was her nose when it touched skin. The rest of her simmered with warmth under her fur, so it wasn't cold that made her tremble. "Sometimes..." she choked. Just that one word.
     It was something we'd both experienced, both tried to explain to the other and always hit the same walls. Ridiculous really: hitting the same barrier from each side. "I know," I sighed. "It doesn't make sense to you."
     "You can't always want what's best for another," she said. "That's... impossible."
     "A," I agreed. "But only wanting what's best for yourself, that's worse."
     She snorted a gust of warm breath across my arm. "So concern about your well-being is so bad?"
     "When it completely ignores you it is."
     "Mikah, in their eyes you're more important than I am. Shave it all, you are more important. You're the only one of you. I'm... I'm common. I'm just a winter teacher. They can find the like in any small town from here to the plains. They know this. They protect what's rare and precious."
     "And you're the only one who's given me as much as you have," I replied. "You are the rarest and most precious thing I know."
     I couldn't see her expression. All I knew was that she didn't reply.
     "If you choose you can stay here while we go ahead," I said. "I'm sure his lordship would welcome you as a guest. And we can make sure it's in his best interest to protect you."
     After a few heartbeats she asked, "Do you trust him?"
     I hesitated. "I don't think I know enough about him..."
     "Jenes'ahn said you were fortunate Makepeace went to the Guild."
     "A," I said.
     "She also said I should stay with you."
     Again, I paused. "Was she telling or suggesting?"
     "It was... more of a recommendation, I think," she said. "She said there were reasons it was better for me to go."
     I felt my guts clench. Jenes'ahn was pushing our agreement in ways it shouldn't be tested. "You... trust that?"
     "I don't know," she confessed. "I don't know what to think; what to trust."
     "I can't make promises," I said. "I thought I could. But... I said this would be safe. I thought it would be. And I was so damn wrong. I can't make promises like that again. Your life; your choice; your decision."
     Claws momentarily pricked my skin. "That's not making things easier, you know."
     "I know. But when it comes to what Rris might do; decisions they might make... you know more of that than I ever could."
     A chitter in the dark. "And they want you for your incalculable knowledge."
     "You're the teacher," I pointed out. "I'm still learning."
     "So you still need me."
     I rolled my head around, nuzzling her ear. She smelled of sweat, of days on the road, of gunpowder and sunlight. And on top of that her fur tickled my nose. "I don't know a day when I haven't."
     Another amused noise accompanied with a subtle tensing. Then she asked, "Does that mean you want sex?"
     That wasn't what I'd... I sighed into fur. "I'm really sore and really tired. And you must be too. Rot, you've still got mud stuck to your fur. You really want sex?" A hesitation.
     "I told you," I said, trying to put some firmness into it, "you can do what you want. Not what she told you."
     A slight chitter. "Sleep does sound good," she confessed.
     I agreed entirely.
     As they say it was darkest at that hour before dawn. But at least that time there was some warmth with me there in that darkness. That helped.

We didn't leave the next day — we were all still licking our wounds.
     There were hurt people who needed tending. There were wagons damaged and a carriage mysteriously missing. There were provisions to arrange and replacement personnel to find and vet.
     Thankfully none of that required my input. I actually had some time to myself.
     His lordship wasn't an art enthusiast, but like most of the nobility had quite a collection of odds and ends. There were items he'd acquired himself as well as works that had been handed down in his... well, family isn't quite the right word for it. Nevertheless there were some beautiful pieces in the keep and I was able to spend some time wandering around the halls viewing them. Local staff occasionally bumbled into the rooms, did almost-comical double takes and hastily backpedaled.
     I limped through cold hallways, my breath frosting in the chill. Most were elegantly finished if modestly appointed, but there were some exceptions. In one room the redwood floor was inlaid with multitudes of fragments of polished bone, each piece meticulously carved so the whole effect was of a spiraling whirlwind of pale leaves. The whole room glowed when the sunlight struck it. Another hall was paved with flagstones, individual footprints worn into the solid stone.
     There were tapestries collecting dust; small statues and busts of various materials; a collection of scent carvings in niches along a hall, the almost-abstract forms of crude wood or raw stone imbued with aromas I couldn't detect at all; antique weapons — swords and daggers and spiked gauntlets and whips of razor chain-links — hung from walls. All fascinating, but it was the paintings I found most intriguing.
     For the most part they seemed to be scattered haphazardly. Hung where someone thought they'd look good, or perhaps just filling in blank space on empty walls. The majority were portraits, peppered with the occasional dramatic scene or landscapes or still life. Ranks of long-dead Rris stared down at me from the walls or were shown wielding some of those archaic weapons against unfortunate foes. Some of those were exceedingly explicit.
     A scene depicting a Rris dressed in the tattered remains of finery, a gleaming sword in hand, standing surrounded by other armed figures. At the feet of the foreground figure the hacked bodies of fallen foes lay on rocks stained glistening red. It was disturbingly close to other scenes I'd seen recently. I shuddered and moved on.
     Rris paintings bring across some of the ways their perceptions differ from mine. There are differences from human art. Some are subtle, some not so much: proportions and aspect ratios and colors that no human artist would find comfortable. In the portraits the figures were in focus while backgrounds tended to be blurred abstracts. And the colors were often... muted to my eyes. Lacking saturation or vibrancy. Okay, some of that may have been due to the age of the works, but I do know there're differences in the way Rris and I perceive colors. What I see as deep blue or dark red they perceive as black. I know this; we'd done some impromptu tests with an artist friend of a friend. So, the paintings sometimes have swatches of burgundy or deep blue where the artist had intended black.
     It was probably the closest I could come to seeing the world through Rris eyes.
     A landscape of green and golden fields with tiny figures bringing in the harvest that reminded me of a Turner; a portrait of an unclothed Rris female standing with fur haloed in silver light; a slumped figure holding its guts in while combat raged around...
     "Busy?"
     Chaeitch padded silently along the narrow gallery. Sunlight washed in through the murky old lead-latticed windows on one side, splintering in the uneven glass so caustic flares and rainbow colors flecked the portraits hanging opposite and glinted off the polished black and white diamond floor tiles. He stopped beside me and looked at the piece.
     "Tasri Peak, I believe."
     "Now you know art?"
     "I do have an education, you know," he snorted. "Besides, this artist is quite wellknown. I've seen some other work by him at the palace. Didn't expect to see such here. Do you like it?"
     I cautiously waved a shrug. "I'm not sure. Technically, it is very good. The texture of the bloody cloth and the foreground light in contrast to the muddy background... it is powerful. The subject though... I've seen quite enough of that."
     "Huhn," he humphed again and stood beside me. Together we stared at the picture for a while. "And regarding that: the girl saved your life?"
     "A," I said. "Possibly a couple of times."
     "And you told her you were indebted to her?"
     "A," I said again, a little more cautiously.
     "And of course you know she told the Mediators you said that."
     I stiffened. "That's... going to be a problem?"
     He kept studying the painting. The frightened eyes of the dying Rris stared back at us. "I would suppose that would depend what you consider a problem," he eventually said.
     "Come on. She wouldn't do something just because..." I trailed off, remembering all those times I'd underestimated the Rris diffidence towards Mediators. "She might."
     "A," he confirmed and chittered aloud. "She might."
     "Not funny," I said and sighed. A few seconds later I had to ask, "Would that be considered... proper?"
     "Why wouldn't it?"
     "Because I'm indebted to her. I might be able to help her, not them."
     "They might have the same needs."
     I chewed that over. "Chaeitch, can you please tell me what your definition of the word 'indebted' is?"
     He glanced at me, cocked his head. "Owing or beholden to someone for something they did for you."
     I parsed that silently. In Rris and English. "Uh," I shook my head.
     "What?"
     "I was wondering if I was using or understanding the wrong incorrectly. Chihirae has... mentioned it before. I thought maybe I was wrong."
     His tail lashed. Once. "A problem?"
     "One of those times I think... we don't assume the same things."
     "Ah," he said.
     Another pause, before I quietly asked, "How is she faring? I mean, really. Not what she's telling me."
     He glanced around the small gallery, as if a Mediator might step out of a still-life. "She's... upset."
     "I noticed. She came back to my room last night."
     "A?" he said.
     "I'm pretty sure the Mediators told her to."
     "Huhn."
     "Do you know..." I bit my lip, wondering if that was what I really wanted to ask. "How much... how much have they told her to do?"
     The look he gave me then was one I couldn't decipher. Surprise? Calculation? Pity? I couldn't be sure. "She's doing what she wants," he finally said. "She is very fond of you."
     Chaeitch was picking those words very carefully?
     "What aren't you telling me?" I said quietly.
     He tried to flick his ears back and winced, touched the bandage and then glanced around again. "Rot and pestilence, Mikah, someone died violently right in front of her. She's got some bad memories and now this happens. She's scared. Very scared."
     That I understood. "What does she want to do? If she wants to go back, she should. I did tell her she could think about staying here. It's a fort. There are guards. She should be safe."
     "I don't know," he hissed softly, tail lashing again. "There's more to it: People know she's important to you. Rot, she's had free access to your library. His lordship is friendly, but that's not the same as trustworthy in these matters. Not by a tail."
     "He wouldn't hurt her!" I said, a little desperately. "He knows what would happen."
     "A, he knows," he replied quietly. "But, Mikah, when you consider what's at stake... It's tender prey, and the hungry will be tempted. Besides, if she returned or stayed here while we went on you'd spend your days fretting about her, a?"
     "She..." I started to protest before my brain caught up with my mouth and made me think. No matter what I said, he was right. She would be a target. As long as she was associated with me she'd be a person of interest anywhere she went. "It's not about what's inconvenient for me: it's about what's right for her." I took a few steps along the gallery, limping slightly. The leg was sore, stiches pulling uncomfortably when skin moved. The next painting was one of a trio of Rris at a table, gesticulating over a piece of paper that looked like a map. The oils glowed with a luster that made them look as if they were still fresh. "You must know what she's thinking better than me. You got any suggestions?"
     Chaeitch stared up at the painting, scratching absently at the back of one hand. "A twisting little snake of a question that is. Even if you were to run off there'd be those who thought it some subterfuge by Land-of-water and still try to use her. Apart from openly driving her away with a stick, I don't think there's much you can do. The only thing that comes to mind, I don't think you'd like it very much."
     "It's to do with the Mediators, a?"
     He waved a shrug. "I know you don't like it, but for now their solution is really the only one."
     "We could cancel the whole thing. Turn around and head back to Shattered Water."
     A snort. "I don't think that's entirely practical. We're more than halfway there."
     "No," I sighed. "Perhaps not. Where is she, anyway? Where's everyone this morning?"
     "I just left Rohinia discussing... things with his Lordship. I believe her teachership is with Rraerch, Makepeace, and Jenes'ahn."
     "Uh," I glanced at him. "All of them together. That's trouble."
     A chitter. "You'll be the one to find out."
     I winced. "Don't remind me."
     "And that reminds me," he said thoughtfully. "Did you discuss anything with his lordship before we arrived?"
     Was that what he'd wanted from the start? "Not a word," I said immediately.
     "Huhhn," he rumbled. "That's interesting. You know, it could give someone a considerable advantage if they knew our future plans."
     "Oh?" I cocked my head. "You know, if someone were under the impression that a future plan we wanted their support on would benefit them, then it would certainly give us a considerable advantage."
     He took a second to think that through and then flashed sharp teeth at me. "That is... not entirely honest."
     "A?" I shrugged. "Is he?"
     He chittered again and again he winced, dabbed at the bandage over his ear with cautious fingertips. "Rot it all. Understand, Mikah, not saying you said anything but... something like that — if it did happen — could become apparent after the fact. That might make people unhappy. Then the Mediators would be unhappy."
     "Isn't that like saying water would get wetter?" I asked.
     He hissed a sigh. "Just a caution," he said. "I'd have thought you'd be juggling quite enough already."
     "I'm just trying to deal with things as they come," I said. "For now what interests me most is all of us getting through this whole nasty business in one piece. If that means I have to say... certain things, then so it will be."
     Chaeitch was quiet for a while. His tail lashed a couple of times and then he said. "I think I understand."
     I shrugged again. "For now it's quiet. For now there are better things to look at and think about. His lordship said there were some older works over in the west wing and I'm going to stroll over and have a look."
     He blinked amber eyes and then made an amused sound. "Did he also happen to mention where he keeps the good wines?"
     "Not as such, no."
     "You really want to look at pictures of dead people?"
     I winced. "Actually, they remind me people can still make beautiful things."
     He looked up at the rich oils again, obviously thinking about that. "Want some company?"
     "Would welcome it."

I spent most of the day wandering the keep, poking around and frightening the natives. There were paintings and other artworks and interesting knick-knacks scattered around in various nooks and crannies. His lordship might not have been keen on paintings, but one room had a rather extensive collection of pistols: everything from a singularly ancientlooking piece that was little more than a roughly-cast iron tube with a touchhole to weapons that were clockwork-precise assemblies of carved and polished woods and precious metals.
     Speaking of which, my coat was returned to my rooms. Cleaned and oiled. Everything seemed to be present and intact, save for a single round of ammunition. I was pretty damn sure I hadn't miscounted, but I kept that bit of information to myself. If I said anything then he might say something and that would lead to more difficult conversations with the Mediators.
     Chihirae spent some time with the Mediators and then vanished somewhere by herself. I didn't chase her. She needed some time to think things over. We all did. Dinner that night was a more formal affair for which his lordship had pulled out the best silverware for his guests. The dining hall was a big, elegant and dim-lit room. Three of the walls were lined with wood; not neatly cut panels, but three meter wide floor-to-ceiling slabs cut from some huge old trees. They were old, worn and polished from use and age, but still with a rough grain to them. Light from oil lamps raised highlights that shone as if the wood was oiled. Tall, narrow tapestries of muted tones accented with silver threads hung down from the ceiling. The remaining wall was fitted with bay windows that looked a lot newer than the rest of the room.
     The table continued the Huge Pieces of Lumber theme. It was a crescent of massive planks. They'd been roughly cut and then fitted, sanded and polished. The surface was a gleaming expanse of smooth grain while the edges still had the uneven contours from under the bark. It was so oversized that the silver plates and serving trays were lost on its expanse and our small party seemed quite undersized.
     The Mediators were there, in their severely plain attire. I'd made an effort and used some of my new wardrobe. The boots were well polished, warm and comfortable. The pants and waistcoat and jacket fit well — for what I'd paid I wouldn't have expected anything else. The cut might've been a bit severe, but I still wasn't comfortable dressing like Christmas wrapping paper. Speaking of which, Rraerch and Chaeitch had also dressed up and their dinner wear glittered with silver and gold. Makepeace sat quietly, subdued and small looking. She'd brushed her fur out until it gleamed, but her finest was plain and threadbare compared with the others.
     Chihirae wasn't present. That absence worked at me like a missing tooth, but I tried not to let it show.
     "I can't persuade you to stay longer?" Ah Sitha asked, sipping delicately from a chalice. "You all look as if you could do with the rest."
     "Thank you, sir," Rohinia replied. "A generous offer I'm afraid we must decline. We're sorely pressed for time. If we're to meet agendas that've already been set we have to leave in the morning. You understand this."
     "A," the Rris lord flicked an ear. "Quite so. Then I hope our hospitality was to your liking. Ah Rihey, you found my collections interesting?"
     "Very, sir," I said. "You do in fact have some pieces by renowned artists. Early works compared with some at the Palace. Interesting to see how they progressed."
     "A?" He looked amused. "I'm afraid that's news to me."
     "Not surprising," Rraerch put in. "Mikah, those artists and their works have been traded up and down the valley for centuries. You'll find their works tend to be scattered along the trail. Other routes tend to concentrate other artists."
     Interesting. I wondered if the older works spread further; if you could do an info graphic on that distribution.
     "I'd have been interested to hear about art of your kind," Ah Sitha said to me.
     I just nodded. Really. I knew he had about as much interest in art as a horse did in fine sculpture.
     "What about your teacher?" he continued with a significant glance at the empty place beside me. "I understand she's upset about what happened."
     "She is," Jenes'ahn said.
     "I am willing to offer her accommodation and protection," his lordship said. "If you choose, she could stay. I can ensure she would be comfortable and safe."
     Jenes'ahn didn't even glance at me. "Thank you, sir, but I'm afraid she must continue. Again, we're fulfilling treaties with specific terms. She will be continuing with us."
     What did that mean? Was that actually true and Chihirae didn't really have a choice? Or was it an excuse so she wouldn't have to endure Ah Sitha's blandishments. More likely the Mediators didn't want him to have the opportunity to learn something they didn't want him to, however small that might be.
     "Ah Rihey," Sitha said to me. "You want her to continue into danger?"
     "It's her choice," I said and then added, "No-one else's."
     In the lamplight Jenes'ahn's eyes were a couple of molten pennies; the rest of her face expressionless as she stared at me.
     "A," Sitha acknowledged with a slight inclination of his head. "Of course. If she should choose to stay, my hearth is hers."
     The meal was started with sweetbread appetizers, then moved on to a veal pie accompanied with something that I think was a wine made from cranberry juice, and then pizza topped with venison and turkey and what was likely goat cheese. Not as weird as it sounds. Not as strange as the fact that Ah Sitha had gone to the trouble of getting the recipe in the first place.
     The conversation was formal and innocuous enough. The Mediators steered talk away from any subject they felt was sensitive so it mostly revolved around my experiences in the Rris world. He still had plenty of questions about those and I had a few stories to tell. When the meal was done we retired to a small room, paneled in wood and dark velvet. There was a big fire there, and cushions and broad crystal snifters of brandy. The Rris lapped gently as discussion turned to the plans for the next day and what our requirements would be.
     We had to cross the river and the town ferry was one of the few points where we could do that. From there the road continued downstream into Bluebetter and their border town of Yeitas'Mas. From there the river downstream was navigable by larger vessels, if the ice wasn't too thick. River transport would be dependent on that point and I fervently hoped it would be possible: boats were a lot more comfortable than carriages. The Mediators had questions and Chaeitch and Rraerch requests for supplies and equipment to replace stuff we'd lost. The one question I had for him was if he'd seen or heard of a physician passing through with an identity very similar to his own physicians'. His answer to that was no.
     By the time we finally returned to our quarters the stars were out, diamond-hard points fixed in the freezing sky. We walked back through halls lit for Rris eyes: dark and indistinct to mine, not helped by the brandy that'd proven to be pretty high-octane. In the twilight outside my rooms I paused, ignoring the guards there as I listened to the others closing their doors, then took a few more limps on down the dark hall. That door was closed as well. Closed and quiet, no light glimmering from under it.
     "Is she in?" I asked the guard outside the door. He was one of ours and he still looked nervous.
     "I... Yes, sir," he said.
     I started to reach for the handle. Stopped. Raised my hand to knock, then lowered it again and just stood and stared at the white-painted wooden barrier in front of me. She'd chosen this; wanted the time to herself. How would she take it if I went in there? Would it do more harm than good? If she was human I would go, just to be company, but she wasn't. So... I wanted to bang my head against the barrier. But the guard was already giving me strange looks. I clenched my hand into a fist, turned on my heel and returned to my room.
     The stove was fully stoked and roaring into its flue, but there was still a chill in the air. Frost crackled across windowpanes — big rooms surrounded by cold stone were a bitch to heat. There was plumbing in the bathroom though, complete with hot water. That had become a staple in most Rris lords' manors and residences and I wasn't complaining. The bath was a tub of smooth, polished marble set in the floor. It wasn't huge, but it was big enough. The copper pipes bolted to the walls rattled and clanged, but the water they delivered steamed and was almost painfully hot. I welcomed that, relishing the first quiet soak I'd had in a real bath for several weeks.
     Oil lamps burned low. I didn't care, just lay there in steaming heat and twilight, soaked in the warmth and mild drunken buzz and watched the shadows flexing on the ceiling. After some time they suddenly skittered wildly. I blinked, momentarily puzzled before I thought to look at the door.
     A figure was quietly closing it. A figure turned and in the dimness twin points of shimmering green-gold eyeshine flashed back at me.
     "I thought you wanted to be alone," I said.
     "I did," said Chihirae.
     She didn't hurry, slowly crossing the room to the bath. Her tunic and breeches fell in a pile and she stepped down into the tub. Hissed softly as the hot water climbed. Sank down with a sigh, sitting beside me. Where her leg pressed against mine underwater her fur felt like waterweed.
     "Is this your choice?" I said into the stillness. "They didn't..."
     "They didn't," she interrupted in a tone that didn't broke arguments. I didn't press her. Another lamp guttered, flickered, went out. It got a little darker. Mist curled like ghosts just above the surface of the hot water.
     "Mikah," she said after a while. "I was thinking."
     I nodded and just let her have her say.
     "This has all been horrible," she continued quietly. "I thought it would be enjoyable; a chance to travel; to see other countries with you. Everyone said it would be safe and I thought... I never thought of anything like this. I was terrified. And day after day of it, of running. And so tired of being frightened."
     I understood that. I knew what she was going to say next, but then she didn't say it.
     "But so were you," she said. "You and Chaeitch and Rraerch and Makepeace... you were all scared, I know you were, but you all choose to keep going."
     That surprised me. It wasn't what I'd been expecting at all. "We don't have much choice. Apparently agreements have been made. If we don't adhere to them it could cause more trouble for a lot more people."
     She hissed softly. "That's what I mean. Mikah: you're the one they're after; you have the most cause to want to run, but you're more concerned about others. About me. I'm not sure what that says about me, but I don't like it."
     "Hey, Don't say that," I protested. "You've every right. This shouldn't be anything to do with you. You're a teacher, by rot! The only reason you're involved with this is because of me."
     "And you're only involved because of something broken in the universe," she retorted. "It's not our fault, neither of us, but here we are. And how we deal with it depends on what we are." She sighed, "I thought I was more than... more than I'm appearing to be. I'm going on with you."
     I listened. I translated that in my head and tried to study the resulting construct from different angles, hunting for meaning and nuance. "This is you, not the mediators or someone telling you? It isn't... obligation of some sort?"
     "It's..." she seemed to hunt for something. "Is this one of those moments?" she asked carefully.
     "I'm not sure. It seems close to it."
     "You want me to stay with you, don't you?"
     "I want you to be safe."
     "So do I," she chittered momentarily. Water sloshed and she subsided. "But staying here, going back... no one can say if those are any better options. And I think I would be ashamed of myself. So, I will continue. If something happens... at least I've tried."
     I lay still and thought that over. Her hand brushed against me under water, fingers twining and tugging at mine. "This is your..."
     "It's my decision," she said. "No one else."
     I leaned my head back on the edge of the tub. The last lamp was almost exhausted, the ruddy glow of the wick just adding texture to the darkness. "I want to see you safe," I said. "I want to see you happy. I want you with me. One of those things precludes the others."
     "Well, you won't be able to see me if I'm not with you, a?" she pointed out. "Mikah, please, I want to continue. You say that you want to make me happy, well perhaps you deserve some yourself, a?" She stroked my arm gently. "Don't leave me here."
     That wasn't fair, making it sound like a plea; like I would be helping her by making the choice that was patently wrong. But the thing was I didn't want to let her go either. That little imp of selfishness inside wanted what she was offering. I thought it over for... for not long enough before saying, "Okay."
     "That means, yes?"
     "A," I said to the darkness. "It does."
     "Thank you," she said.
     "Are you sure? Are we going to regret this?"
     "I'm sure," she said, patting my hand under water. "As for the future... I guess we'll find out, a? Now, this water is getting cold. Why don't we get you out and into something warm?"
     "What's warm around this icebox?"
     "How about me?"
     That took a second to sink in. When I looked at her, her exaggerated grin glistened just as the last of the light died.

We spent the extra day the stopover cost us constructively: Repairs were made; provision were restocked; animals rested; wounded treated. More importantly people were able to take a bit of time away from the routine of the road and away from each other. The Rris needed that even more than I did.
     We departed again early the next morning. First light was painting hilltops when the carriages set off. Ah Sitha was there to see us off and the local lord looked a little annoyed. Possibly because he'd had a golden opportunity and somehow it'd just slipped away. Or perhaps there was some other reason.
     We had another carriage. It wasn't as fancy as the one lost in the river, but it would suffice. Our numbers had been bolstered by a contingent of local guards. Two dozen fresh troops rode with us out of the city gates. They weren't as polished as our own guards and they were armed with old muskets, crossbows and swords, but they were fresh and welcome reinforcement. Why didn't we have Mediators from the Guild hall as well? I asked about that and as it turned out that the Land-of-Water agreement with Bluebetter had specified only two mediators. Of course the Guild couldn't violate that agreement.
     "Not when it took so long to get all parties to agree to the details of that contract," Rohinia told me. "We can't accept any more Mediators in this party."
     The river at that point was too wide for Rris bridge construction technology, especially with multi-ton ice floes carouselling their way downstream. Therefore the ferry was the only way across.
     It wasn't a small raft-on-rope affair like some of the others I'd seen. There was a proper ferry boathouse set below the guns of the river fort. The new brick building provided some shelter for those waiting and also contained a steam engine, one of the low-pressure ones that'd been state-of-the-art before I'd arrived. The old design was a huge affair of black iron and brass pies and tubing. A strapped and riveted iron boiler the size of a small locomotive drove a vertical piston shaft half a meter in diameter in and out of its housing. Water and condensing vapor spewed everywhere and the thing growled and snorted like a living thing as the piston rose and fell with a ponderous grace, driving a see-sawing crossbeam. A connecting rod linked that beam to a wheel taller than I was, grinding it around with a chugging motion I'd always associated with steam locomotives. That wheel was coupled in turn to a massive iron gearbox and that to a windlass hauling an endless loop of hemp hawser the thickness of my arm dotted with iron ballast every fifty meters or so. That cable hauled the ferry itself back and forth across the kilometer breadth of the river.
     The ferry itself was businesslike. It was essentially just a flat bottomed barge large enough to take four wagons and their teams. Thick planks of wood were slung over the sides on chains, hanging down to the water line as protection against drifting ice. Those fenders were battered and dented almost as much as the heavy decking, scared and scratched by countless iron wheels and animal hooves. The trim, however, was clean and bright: railings and the small wheelhouse painted sky blue and canary yellow. Brass fittings gleamed in winter sunlight. An iron mechanism of wheels and clamps secured the cable on the upstream side, otherwise the thing didn't have any sort of steering or propulsion system. No need to.
     A squad of our troops went across first. The whole crossing took about twenty minutes. The ferry made slow, steady progress across the kilometer-and-a-half-wide expanse of the river. That squad reinforced local guard at the terminal on the other side. The terminal on our side of the river was likewise surrounded by militia troops as well as our people. Back behind cordons traffic was backing up and annoyed locals barred from the ferry complained and bickered with city guards.
     Fifteen minutes later the ferry returned, crunching through thin icy rime as it slotted into its dock and the slackening cable sank beneath the water. Three carriages were loaded, the drovers leading the skittish teams up gangplanks and lashing the wheels into place on deck. Gears ground and engaged and the hawser emerged dripping from the river as it drew taut and pulled the ferry out again. The steam engine chuffed away steadily, drawing the cable along at a steady rate.
     No problems. Smooth sailing.
     Then someone said something in a querying tone. Heads turned to see what it. There was a moment of silence, then muttering that turned into alarmed shouts. I looked. There was a boat in the river: a small boat, a dingy with a little sail riding ahead of the wind. No, there were two of them — I could see another further off across the river. They weren't supposed to be there — the river had been closed to other traffic. But there they were, and they were both heading downstream at a good clip.
     Rris shouted. A rolling boom thundered out across the valley and I flinched, ducking uselessly. A waterspout splashed up a hundred meters or so from the closest dingy. Up on the fort's wall a cloud of smoke was dissipating and as I watched another cloud of dirty grey gouted. The retort rolled over the water and the next waterspout was disturbingly close to the ferry. Rris shouted and the boats kept closing. The cannon on the fort didn't fire again but on the shore and the ferry muskets were leveled and fired off a ragged and useless volley. Our own peoples' more modern breechloaders weren't much better: they were lightweight carbines and while having a higher rate of fire and being more accurate than smoothbore muskets, still weren't intended for shooting at moving targets over two hundred meters out.
     The boats reached the hawser and figures went to work, frantically cutting and sawing. Guards were rushing to push some small rowboats out, but there was no way they could get even close before the attackers severed the hemp lines. The gearbox screeched and clattered as tension was lost and the severed end of the weighted hawser sank into the river. The small boats, their work done, put up every piece of sail and ran for it, heeled hard over as they fled downstream. The helpless ferry just drifted off after them, pirouetting gently.
     I closed my mouth. Standing alongside me at the grimy window of the terminal office overlooking the scene the other Rris had expressions that ranged from horrified to dumbstruck. I turned away from the ridiculous scene to find the Mediators. "What the flying fuck was that?" I demanded.
     The office was a grimy little room adjacent to the coal bunker. There were some ledgers on shelves and a beaten-up low desk over in front of the window. Beyond the back wall the steam engine thudded away, but it was still bitterly cold in the room. Nobody had considered killing two birds with one stone and using it to heat the place. Then again, for the naturally fiber-insulated Rris that probably wasn't a priority. Rohinia had bundled us in there just before the carriages were loaded, telling us to stay out of sight. I hadn't seen Jenes'ahn all morning.
     "Not unexpected," Rohinia said calmly. The others were looking around now.
     "What?" I asked, not quite sure if I'd heard correctly.
     "You anticipated this?" Rraerch asked.
     Rohinia flicked an ear. "Not this precisely," he said. "An attack on one of the terminals while you were crossing, perhaps. But this... seems excessively planned. Again."
     That was an understatement. I felt like the Roadrunner watching one of Wile E.'s ridiculously over-engineered schemes unfolding. "What the hell do they plan to do now? They can't tow them with those things, can they?"
     "I would guess that they have resources down river waiting to board the ferry," he said.
     "And us? What do we do? They've run off with our transport and luggage. And our people! Rot, how many people did we have on the ferry?"
     "We wait," he said.
     "What?" I demanded, unable to comprehend his complacence. The door creaked and we both looked around as Jenes'ahn returned.
     "It's done?" Rohinia asked her.
     "A," she said. "They all cooperated. The paperwork was in order. I saw the messenger off. It's up to them to agree if they choose."
     "I think odds are favorable," Rohinia said.
     "What's going on?" Chaeitch said, looking from one mediator to the other. "What have you done?"
     From downstream came sounds like distant thunder; several heavy thumps closely followed by the rolling booms of what had to be cannons. Rris ears twitched and heads turned to the window.
     "Huh," Jenes'ahn grunted to her partner. "I think you might be right."
     Sounds of another salvo rumbled up the valley but we couldn't see anything from our vantage point. After the third round Chaeitch and the others moved outside onto the dock to try and get a better view. I started to follow. Jenes'ahn put her hand on my chest.
     "It might not be safe," she said.
     "Really?" I said. "How'd you know they won't steal this building as well?" Then I just pushed past her. Rohinia said something in the background and she didn't pursue.
     We stood around on the dock, gazing downstream. Makepeace said she heard gunshots. I didn't hear anything, but I'd trust her ears over mine any day. It was about half an hour later that something did become visible, and I don't think it was quite what anyone had been expecting.
     The column of smoke was visible first and someone wondered if something was burning. I was the first to see what it actually was when the source of the smoke rounded a bend far downstream.
     "Well, will you look at that," I said.
     "What?" Rris around me chorused.
     The smokestacks hove into view around the bend downstream first, twin stacks streaming black smoke. Then the armored superstructure and bulk of the slate-grey hull.
     Chunks of ice broke against the plated prow and were churned under by twin paddle wheels thrashing against the sluggish current as the riverboat steamed up the channel toward us, the ferry in tow behind.

Ten minutes later the riverboat was drawing up to the dock. As it turned out, berthing a large vessel with a matched pair of huge paddle-wheel enclosures protruding from the sides required some juggling. Rris ran about the docks, shouting and improvising fenders and pulling on ropes and trying to find gangplanks that would reach. The ship was larger and bulkier than the old Ironheart had been. Considerably so. And from its lines it'd been designed from the water up as a gunboat. The hull was wooden with a high waterboard, putting the deck well up over our heads. Grey-painted angled armor plating ran around the edge of the deck and wheelhouse and the snouts of cannon lurked in slits. Smoothbore muzzleloaders and a wooden frame construction, but still the lines of the vessel were radically different from traditional Rris designs.
     Our party stood on the dockside, amidst drying racks and a few boxes and barrels. Small hand-cranked cargo cranes stood idle along the waterfront, looking like oversized wading birds. I stood in the center of a cluster of Rris as we watched the proceedings and goings-on, the laptop case slung over my shoulder and Chihirae at my side. Chaeitch and Rraerch and Makepeace close by. The Mediators stood a short distance away, along with the commander of our guards. I couldn't help but notice we had a fair number of our own guards, not quite forming a cordon, but still quite close to hand.
     "That engine," Chaeitch growled quietly. "That's one of the newer designs. Modified though."
     "You can tell?" Rraerch replied. "You can hear it," he said. "Distinctive rhythm, quieter, faster stroke. Also, one of the old ones in a ship this size would be so big, require so much fuel that the ship would have too great a draft to get this far upstream. Especially with all that scrap metal nailed on."
     "And the paddle wheels? Why those and not the blades?"
     "Better for shallow waterways," he said. "And also I'd say the water blades are subtle and complex enough that the right designs aren't easily copied. We had enough difficulties."
     "Looks like they've been busy with the stuff they have been able to copy," I observed.
     "Or traded," Rraerch said. When we all looked at her she waved a shrug. "It has been done, you know. And why would they so blatantly show off something they gained through illicit means?"
     "Then it would be interesting if they show us the engine," Chaeitch said. "As far as I know information about that wasn't traded to anyone. Anyway, if they're using what I think they're using, then that's already old and rotting news."
     I looked around at the Mediators standing back a few paces and watching the ship and us. "You were expecting this?" I asked.
     "I did say I had a plan," Rohinia said mildly.
     A plan? I tried to remember. "What? That was days ago. This is it?"
     They both waited a few seconds, seemingly evaluating the question. Then Rohinia said, "We sent a message. This response was... uncertain but high [probability? Chance?]"
     I shook my head and went back to watching it docking. They... the Guild knew that this had been waiting downstream. They sent a message. Did their people in Yeitas'Mas pressure Bluebetter to send it?
     "Was this what you were talking about?" I said.
     "You asked Bluebetter for help?" Rraerch interjected, sounding surprised.
     "No," Rohinia said without batting an ear. "We merely extended an offer of sanctioned open passage to Summer Breaks courtesy of local Land-of-Water government."
     "Fortuitous timing," Rraerch said.
     "Indeed," the Mediator placidly agreed. I couldn't tell if there was deliberately observed and ignored irony there or if that exchange was sincere.
     The Bluebetter ship had a name painted on the paddle wheel covers. Chaeritch told me it translated as The Racing Pigeon. Really, it sounds better in Rris, but I had to admit that, after seeing it flailing its way upstream, the name fit. The vessel was big and bulky and the docks weren't designed for something like that, but eventually the crew and dockhands managed to get it moored and a gangplank set in place. Further off down the dock other Rris were trying to get the ferry pulled in. God knew how they intended to get the carriages and nervous animals off.
     The first off the Pigeon were armed guards. A squad of six rattled down the gangway in single file and formed up on the dock, impassive expressions and rifles held at the ready. Their uniforms were polished and well-worn leather with cuirasses and gorgets showing burnished steel painted with blue highlights. Very professional-looking, but I still saw them glancing at me. Not too surprising: I was head and shoulders taller than all others on the docks, so I did stand out. And what stood out about them were their weapons. The rifles. They were breech loaders. Not as compact as the Land of Water carbines, but like the ship they were still a lot more advanced than standard weaponry of the day.
     Another group of Rris followed the guards, five of them in total. The one leading the way was a short Rris with a dark furred-face in which bright amber eyes almost glowed. Whoever it was wore a green and rust vest decorated in an intricate paisley-like design trimmed with silver embroidery, which looked a little odd with the trendy knock-off replica blue-jeans and small sheathed dagger at the waist. Following close behind were a pair in uniforms, one of them was a heavy-set older Rris with grey-speckled fur and wearing armor similar to the guards, but a little more ornate. An officer then. The other uniformed Rris was slim and tall and dressed in similar colors, but only in fabric and leather. Different branch of their forces? The remaining two seemed to be another couple of civilians, although by the cut of their clothing and the expensive jewelry they weren't common laborers.
     The short one in the blue-jeans had seen our group, seen me, and promptly steered in our direction. Chaeitch nudge me. "That's Hedia aesh Tekhi," he said. "She's ah Thes'ita's personal aide. If she's here..."
     He cut off as she approached. "Ah Ties. Aesh Smither. Constables," Hedia greeted my companions with a small bow before turning to me. "And of course Ah Riey. Our arrival seems to be well-timed."
     "We thank you for your timely assistance," Rraerch said. "Aesh Tekhi and... ?"
     The Bluebetter Rris gestured to the others, to the pair in uniform and the other two civilians. "Apologies. This is ah Ejir, our troop commander."
     The solidly-built older Rris inclined his head.
     "Aesh Rurusi, captain of The Racing Pigeon."
     The other uniformed Rris also acknowledged us, staring at me quite openly.
     "And these are my aides, Kestirae and Vehesk. If I'm occupied and you have any requirements, I'm sure they will be able to assist you."
     "Gracious," Rraerch said. "I have to say we weren't expecting..." she gestured at the ship. "This."
     "Neither were we," Hedia said. "However, a message turned up in the early hours exhorting us to proceed to Summer Breaks as there were difficulties with the road. Huhn," she eyed the Mediators. "It didn't seem to be the roads that had problems."
     Rraerch also glanced at them before recovering. "A, quite. Our people will be grateful for the recovery. We heard gunfire. No casualties on your side I hope?"
     A casual tip of her hand. "The commander's people dealt with the trouble admirably."
     The older uniformed Rris twitched an ear at the accolades. "It wasn't an issue. There were more boats waiting downstream. A few rounds and they changed their minds and ran. Your local garrison should be notified."
     "Really," Hedia snorted. "I must say the bandits on the trail are getting [boisterous]. You should look into it. They were after Ah Riey?"
     "That would seem to be the case."
     "You are all right?" she asked me.
     "Perfectly fine, Ma'am," I replied.
     She blinked once, then said, "Fortunate he wasn't on the ferry.
     "Quite," Rraerch said again.
     The Bluebetter Rris looked around, at the docks, at us, at me. "Then perhaps this isn't the best place to be discussing this. Captain, can we board them now?"
     "A," said the other uniformed Rris. "There's cargo?"
     "Some luggage," Chaeitch said, casting an enquiring look to our guard commander.
     "They're loading it now, sir," he said and gestured at the crews bustling around the ferry.
     "I see," the captain said. "I suggest you hurry. We really don't want to linger too long. I don't want the boilers to cool — we've been fortunate with the river, but we shouldn't try our luck."
     "Understood," the commander said and murmured something to a lieutenant who hurried off, presumably to hurry the workers along.
     "Would you care to board now?" Hedia said to us. "We can get you settled while your luggage is loaded. Is that satisfactory?"
     "Quite," I said and Rris looked at me. Hedia blinked.
     "Very good," she said, a little uncertainly then ducked her head in a formal little bow. "Then, please, come aboard."
     She gestured toward the gangplank and stood aside. Rraerch returned the nod and stalked past her. One by one we fell in behind and walked up the inclined ramp. I limped my way up carefully; the thing tended to bounce and didn't feel that solid, especially when crossing the wide gap between the ship's hull and the wharf. Water and ice swirled around down there and I really didn't feel like going for another swim. I noticed that the Rris also tended to keep a firm hand on the rope rails as they boarded.
     The ship was larger than the Ironheart had been. The stern deck where we embarked was polished wood, swept free of ice and snow. There were the usual nautical accoutrements such as hatches and lockers and coiled ropes, but also the squat shapes of matte black cannon rolled back from their firing embrasures and tied down. Forward was the central superstructure: cabins and storage and the enclosures protecting the paddle. The armored wheelhouse perched atop that with a single large funnel emblazoned with the gold glyph denoting Bluebetter behind it. The rakish design was a great deal advanced from traditional Rris ships. Suspiciously so. I could see it, but would the other Rris?
     "Guests to my hearth," Hedia said to us.
     "And to my host my gratitude," Rraerch replied. The greeting sounded quite similar to the one Hiesh had given, albeit more formal. Rris as a whole aren't big on meaningless ceremonies, so something like that probably had a reason.
     "Now," Hedia continued, "I'm afraid accommodation is tight, but there are cabins for your party. Ah Reiy?"
     "Ma'am?"
     "We have a cabin for you and your teacher. I'm afraid it's not large as space is limited, but it should be adequately appointed. That is acceptable?"
     I glanced at My Teacher to see how she took that. She just bowed her head. "Most acceptable. Thank you, Ma'am."
     The hatch into the deckhouse was built for Rris — I had to bend over to get through and then keep my head ducked to stop banging it on the ceiling which was... Inside... wasn't what I'd been expecting. On the surface the Pigeon had looked like a warship, but inside it was polished wooden paneling, gleaming brass fittings and green and gold carpets. It smelled of wood and beeswax and varnish and polish, without that undertone that hinted that Rris had resided in it for a while. A narrow corridor ran down one side of the superstructure, portholes on one side, cabin doors to the other. A considerable contrast from the armor plate and guns outside.
     The cabin Chihirae and I were shown to was situated toward the end of the hall, near amidships. When the narrow door was opened I got another surprise. Hedia had been right: the space was small, but it was so extravagantly appointed it was like looking into a jewel case. There was more polished wood and carpeting, along with purple crushed velvet cushioning and gleaming metal finish and shiny green leather. There were gas lamps with safety mantels and milky glass globes; there was a baroquely twisted radiator that looked like it was made out of solid copper; a porcelain washbasin with faucets; a desk with an actual chair set before it positioned under a porthole directly opposite the door. The bed was a box bed set in an alcove to the left and I couldn't help but notice it was longer than the Rris standard. The room had been customized, and probably at some expense.
     "It's satisfactory?" Hedia asked from behind.
     I nodded. "It's... uh... quite satisfactory."
     "There's a problem?" she looked quite concerned.
     "No," I hastened to say. "No problem. It's just quite a change from where I've been the past few days."
     "For the better, I hope?"
     For a split second I flashed back to a freezing dark hole in the ground. "Considerably," I said.
     There were probably several ways for her to interpret that and I wasn't sure which one she'd gone with, but she looked mollified.
     The others got their own quarters. The Mediators were bunked together, but Chaeitch and Rraerch and even Makepeace each had a small cabin. None of them were as opulent as the blatantly overdone Faberge egg they'd give me and Chihirae, but still luxurious by local standards. Our guards and staff were accommodated in a cargo hold, which was certainly steerage by comparison, but not as bad as it sounds: the space under the forward deck had been cleared out and ranks of bunks and even stoves installed. Better than the thin tents they'd been using on the road.
     We were leaving nearly half our forces there in Summer Breaks and replacing them with Bluebetter troops. The plan had originally been to do that downriver at Yeitas'Mas, but necessity had changed that. I had to wonder how effective that would be — two different forces with different loyalties and training and possibly different objectives.
     It took perhaps three quarters of an hour to get everyone settled and to get the cargo loaded and luggage shifted. Then sailors were bustling around and shouting orders and a barely perceptible throbbing beneath the deck increased and the paddle wheels began to churn, crackling against river ice. The bow swung out, further into the current and the ship began a ponderous turn to aim downstream. The pace of the engines kick up a bit, one wheel cranking a little faster and the ship pivoted faster. Neat trick. Something screws can't do as effectively, unless you're using azipods. I considered that for a bit as I stood on the deck,
     huddled down into my coat while watching the city of Summer Breaks sliding away and wondering how effective a battery-powered river vessel would be.
     "His highness is greatly anticipating your visit," Hedia was telling me. "He does regret that incident in Shattered Water. I can assure you there won't be a repeat."
     "Incident?" Chihirae noted.
     "There was a misunderstanding a while back," I said, trying to keep it inconsequential. "I smiled at someone I shouldn't have."
     "Oh," she said, her ears twitching back. "That sort of misunderstanding."
     "A," Hedia said. "You should know that people have been informed about you and your mannerisms and there won't be any such... misunderstandings. Anything you require, please just ask."
     "Would you have any Grey Poupon?"
     She looked confused, then worried.
     "I believe that's a joke," Chaeitch leaned forward to offer. "It's his sense of humor. It's... unique."
     "Everyone's a critic," I sighed and Chihirae elbowed me.
     "A," Hedia said, a little uncertainly. "Nevertheless, if there's anything of a... nonhumorous nature you require, please just ask."
     "Thank you, Ma'am," I said.
     Her gaze flickered across my face, shifting uncertainly, as if trying to latch onto a familiar response; perhaps trying to determine if that was a joke. "Not a joke," I said. "Thank you for the hospitality. And the ride."
     I think she relaxed a smidgen. "It's our honor."
     "It's impressive," I said. "I didn't know there were many large vessels like this around. I thought the Land of Water one was unique."
     "Ah," she smiled. "It was. There's been some discourse with Shattered Water; an exchange of ideas and information. We used some of our knowledge, some of the new techniques, mixed them together and as you can see, Racing Pigeon is the result."
     "Impressive," Chaeitch acknowledged. "I trust you've got reliable release valves on the boilers?"
     "A, that unfortunate incident with your vessel. I recall. That was a valve problem? Never fear. We have ample valves. We're quite safe."
     I smiled slightly. More valves means more saferer. So, she wasn't an engineering type then. "That is good to know," I said.
     "And ah Rihey, I can't help but notice you are limping. Are you in need of a physician?"
     "No. It's just a small cut. Nothing serious."
     She looked dubious. "And what looks like a bullet hole in your coat there."
     "Oh, yes, I've been meaning to get that patched."
     That threw her a bit. She seemed to hunt for the joke for a few seconds, then twitched an ear and just said. "As you wish. There're won't be any more problems. We'll be stopping in Yeitas'mas to take on fuel. That will take a couple of hours. Then we're making straight for Red Leaves. The ice downstream is still thin, so we should make satisfactory time. Better than by road at least. Now, these assailants of yours, what do you know about them?"

Yeitas'mas was a reflection of its upstream counterpart, Summer Breaks. It was a walled town situated on a granite bluff overlooking a river bend. Smoke rose from chimneys above steep, high-peaked roofs. Larger buildings clustered along the river and the docks, where a winter market was in full swing. There was also the fort, sprawled over the riveredge of the bluff like some great beast sunning itself. Black muzzles of iron cannon covered the water below. There was also an odd tower up there: a slender thing with a peaked roof that looked strangely like a church steeple.
     I was surprised at how close to Summer Breaks the town was. Usually the settlements along the trail were separated by a day's foot travel; the larger ones further than that. But it only took us a couple of hours to reach the Bluebetter border town. The border itself was an amorphous territory somewhere between the two towns. Not quite a DMZ, but an area each side had agreed not to disagree over.
     Crowds gathered along the stone quaysides to gawk as the ship maneuvered into its berth. I could see soldiers in uniforms like the ones the troopers on the ship wore performing crowd-control duties, keeping the curious onlookers back as the ship docked. There wasn't much else to see: my minders wanted me to keep a low profile so I just got a few glimpses through portholes.
     Hedia had been right about it being a short stop. Coal was loaded into a bunker from a hopper hoisted over by one of the little hand-cranked dockside cranes. Sure, you can build a steam-ship, but building the infrastructure to support and fuel it was a bit trickier. Said infrastructure hadn't reached this far upriver yet so the hardware they had to make do with was normally used for fueling the little toy steam tugs that puttered up and down the local riverside. They didn't have anything like the fuel capacity the Pigeon did, so it took quite a few crane-loads to fill the bunkers. As that was done more supplies were being brought on board and stowed away in other holds, the noise of wooden crates and pots banging and clattering sounding through the ship — supplies they hadn't had an opportunity to stow before their hasty departure before dawn that morning.
     As soon as everything was stowed the Pigeon set off again.
     Travelling by boat was a damn sight more comfortable than travelling by what passed for a road around here. There was none of the jolting and buffeting and unpredictable nervewracking occasional skids sideways on ice. There was more room. What's more, on that particular boat there was heating and lighting and a proper bed and hot water. Someone was going all out to try and impress me, and quite frankly, they were succeeding.
     Somewhere below decks the engine chugged away with a deep throbbing pulse I could feel through my boots. The town vanished behind us into the folds of the landscape. Water and countryside scrolled past. Uncountable ranks of trees, bare and grey and dark, marched down to the water's edge where a cold breeze slapped ripples and ice against the shore. In places drifting ice had built up along the shore, caking it in broken and jagged shards of dirty ice and snow that jutted long ways out into the stream. Away in the distance low grey cloud was rolling in, blurring the heights of distant hills and promising more snow.
     And it turned out the food was better. Midday meal was ready it was served in what was usually a saloon. With the table set out it was a bit cramped, but the room was as sumptuously appointed as the rest of the accommodation, complete with a proper table with cushions and silverware that our party could just fit around. Our staff and Bluebetter stewards served a proper meal, rather than a quick lunch of jerky and bread.
     "That food is prepared to your liking?" Hedia asked me carefully.
     I paused, the spoonful of thick stew halfway to my mouth. "It's very good," I said.
     "We've filled the list your cooks provided," she said, nibbling at a dripping slice of liver speared on a fork. "And we have tried to anticipate, but exact details about your dietary preferences were difficult to come by."
     "Nevertheless, you seem to have done very well," Rraerch said, munching on her own blood pudding.
     "Thank you," Hedia replied. "There are a few questions I'd like to ask though. They are important, but... delicate."
     "I'm right here," I said.
     "A," she said. "It's about foods you are sensitive to. We don't want a repeat of the accidental poisoning you had in Shattered Water, so have avoided foods seasoned with [nightshade] or [poppy] seeds. Are there any other dishes or seasonings we should be aware of?"
     "Be careful with mushrooms," I said. "Also seasoning from tomato leaves and stems — use the fruit instead. And I think some types of potatoes if they're not cooked properly. There is a taste that offers some warning, but I don't think I can rely on that."
     "I understand," she said. "Thank you. We'll be most careful."
     The ship steamed on downstream. Once we stopped off at a small town to pick up what I learned was a local river-master — someone who knew this stretch of the water like the back of his hairy hand. The river was treacherous for vessels of this size simply because its depth varied so much. In places it was only a few feet deep, so the river-masters were necessary to guide the ship around submerged obstacles and through the deeper navigable channels. At times we seemed to slalom through what looked like perfectly clear stretches of water as they led us through shallows. Even then, the Pigeon only slipped through by virtue of its shallow draft and paddle wheels. An ocean-capable vessel with a deep keel and lowhanging screws and rudder would have found itself grounded and without propulsion well downstream.
     By evening clouds had rolled in and the setting sun was a fading orange fire somewhere beyond the horizon. In the fog and twilight the surrounding forested hills were reduced to indistinct giants sprawled at the edges of the visible world. The river was a flat black expanse and all I could see were vague forms of islands and shores, detail gone when I tried to look closer. No lights save for a couple of little navigation lamps — the Rris in the pilothouse saw better without some feeble oil lamp to ruin their night vision.
     I stood on the upper deck, on the narrow walkway just behind the wheelhouse and smoke stack where it was sheltered. I was still bundled against a wind cold enough to bring tears to your eyes, leaning on the railing and watching the passing twilight. A light flared nearby, a small flame momentarily illuminating Chaeitch's features in a surreal chiaroscuro as he lit his pipe, then settling down to a ruddy glow in the bowl.
     "How far have we come today?" I asked.
     The glow of the pipe brightened momentarily as he puffed thoughtfully. "I'd estimate sixty kilometers. Maybe a tail over."
     "Better than we'd have done in three days," I said.
     "A. More comfortable as well."
     No arguments there. "So, what is this ship? It's not a warship. Not exactly. But then again it's not exactly a normal civilian ship."
     "Huhn," he tapped his pipe and puffed again. "I think this is what is known as a statement."
     "You mean, 'Look what we can do'?"
     "Along those lines, a. And look at the finishing touches: completely unnecessary, yet they added them. They're trying to impress someone. Are they succeeding?"
     I held up thumb and forefinger a smidgen apart. "A little."
     He snorted. "You've seen bigger ships than this before. You've got pictures of ships that could eat this one whole. And you're impressed?"
     "Perhaps it's just in contrast to the past few days," I said, then grinned. "Don't worry: I'm not going to decide to move to Bluebetter."
     "Rot, I'm almost tempted," he said. "But then they always did take ships more seriously than most nations."
     "That's surprised me. I mean, there's a whole world out there. Other continents, resources, foods and spices and materials. You don't seem to care."
     "Huhn," he blew a stream of smoke. "People care — a great deal. Colonies have been started by several nations, but they're small. A long, dangerous voyage over so much water to live somewhere so far from civilization. It's not something many are eager to do."
     "Oh. A long time ago some of our countries used to ship criminals off to colonies."
     "How did that work out?"
     "Umm, possibly not the way they expected."
     "How surprising," he said. "But there's not a great deal of crowding here — there's still land in the west and south where settlements are thin on the ground. And, Mikah, most countries are stretched thin as it is, usually without enough people to cover their own borders."
     "Would make wars difficult. Go off to fight and someone else takes over your country."
     "A. Not that countries are the targets. It's the valuable areas, such as the trail here, the rivers and passes. If someone is careless and bites off more than they can swallow, then they will be injured, someone takes theirs and then everything collapses like a rotten house. There are places like this that are easy to defend, but there are also plenty of borders so porous that armies could march past each other without seeing one another. Starting more colonies across water — sending more people and troops away — that's not seen as a sensible move by most countries."
     "Wouldn't it pay off in the long term?"
     "How? You said your own land was a colony originally? What happened? Those other colonies, how many are still considered as such?"
     "Oh. Right. Yeah." They actually thought ahead to things like that?
     "With better, faster ships it would probably become more appealing. But I think our neighbors would like to keep their teeth in the edge they've got on such industry, so there might be some opposition there."
     "They would do that? Wouldn't it be wiser to try and keep their edge with new ideas?"
     He waved a shrug. "Depends how they're thinking. The Guild seems to be leaning toward restricting new knowledge, so following the Guild decree might be seen as the easier route. At least, to outsiders' eyes."
     "And the Guild would class shipbuilding as forbidden knowledge?"
     "The ability to move large numbers of troops or cargo around fast? I think they might."
     I sighed. Yeah, small populations and large borders and a lingering feudal attitude. I guess if someone had a serious force multiplier and were fast and ruthless enough to use it before their competitors, they could do a lot of damage.
     "A," Chaeitch took another drag on his pipe. The sweet smell of weed drifted on the cold air. "Politics. I know. That's why I prefer machinery. You can't put politicians through a forge and hammer them into shape."
     "Well you can," I said. "But it gets messy."
     He chittered and his pipe glowed again. The sun was gone, the moon lost behind racing banks of clouds. But Chaeitch's pipe wasn't the only light out there that night; another flash away in the distance caught my eye. I squinted into the gloom until I saw it again.
     "What's that?" I asked.
     "What?" Chaeitch looked. "What is what?"
     "There's a flashing light. Right up there in the hills. A signal?"
     "Huhn," he cocked his head, then snorted. "A, signal towers. There's a line of them up there. They use mirrors and sunlight. There was one at Yeitas'Mas."
     "The odd tower on the fort?"
     "A."
     "Ah, I understand. But... not much sunlight at the moment."
     "A. There are chemical lights for emergencies. I suppose they consider this one. Huhn, there several lines of them across Bluebetter. They've been called the Hilltop Folly."
     "Folly?"
     "A. Detractors say the towers cost a fortune to build and maintain and operate. A lot of expense for something that operates perhaps a quarter of the time."
     I scratched my head, confused. "You were just telling me watching the borders is difficult. A communication line like that is... a massive advantage. They know what is happening everywhere in the country. Not to mention everyday use; they're going to know what happened to us before any other messenger could get there."
     "A. When something happens it's useful. The rest of the time it's a drain on coffers."
     "What about for everyday uses, such as trading? Merchants would pay a lot to know how much goods might go for in other towns."
     "A. But not as much as they would be charged for the message."
     "That expensive?"
     "You wouldn't believe it."
     I thought back to the rates charged by some telcos back home charged and shrugged. "Sounds like they need some competition."
     "Something like your world-net?"
     "Might be a bit early for that, but if they have that, then possibly the Guild might not be able to object to another information system. Something that performs the same job as those towers, but faster and cheaper."
     "But would still require some new devices or theories. Like your esserisity, a?"
     "Well... possibly," I conceded. "A. Likely."
     "Then I'm sorry to say I think the Guild might still have issues."
     I shook my head and sighed, a pale fog visible as the moon peeked from behind a cloud. Snowflakes the size of postage stamps whirled on the wind, gleaming for a few moments before the clouds rolled back. "Do you think they're going to be happy about that?" I asked.
     "Who?"
     "Bluebetter. I mean... they go to all this trouble to get us there, and then they find that everything they ask about has to go through the Guild. Who are almost guaranteed to block them."
     "I think they'll have to take that up with the Guild," he said.
     "You going to tell that to all the other kingdoms? That's not going to make you many friends," I replied.
     "A. But it will bring pressure on the Guild to perhaps loosen the constraints a bit."
     "That's a bit... passive aggressive," I said. "Will it work?"
     He waved a shrug, took another puff. "It's legal. And the Guild doesn't bow to one country's demands, but if all speak with the same voice, then it can change policies. It's in their charter."
     "And will take how long?"
     "I have no idea. It's not a swift process, that's a certainty."
     "So, not tomorrow then."
     He chittered and confessed: "Probably, no."
     I shook my head. "Well, I don't think I'm going to wait around out here for it. There's a warm bed down there and I intend to make the most of it."
     "One thing," he said. "The walls in your cabin might not be as solid as they look. You might want to consider keeping... activities quiet, a?" His imitation of my grin glistened in the shadows.
     "Thanks. Thanks a lot."
     His chitter carried on the cold wind as I carefully headed down the steps and headed below decks. Sailors and Bluebetter guards out and about on deck jerked hastily out of my way and stared after me as I passed. Our own guards were less jumpy, but the ones on duty in the companionway outside our cabins cabin still stiffened to attention when I went by.
     In the cabin the lights were turned down to hissing embers in their globes, just adding some texture to a gloom that was warm and already smelled of wet fur. The throb of the engines pulsed through the floor. A square of light flickered where Chihirae was curled up on the bed watching something on the laptop. Silken, by the soundtrack drifting through the cabin. Her eyes glowed like coals when she looked up. "You look cold," she observed.
     "Feel it too," I said as I carefully hung my coat up and then started to struggle out of my boots. "How about you? How are you faring? They've been treating you okay?"
     "A," she said. "With great deference. They offered me use of a personal steward."
     "Why, congratulations, your ladyship."
     She chittered. "I declined. I think I can look after myself. You know, I don't like boats, but I think I can get used to this."
     "Better than a carriage?"
     "There's a toilet. I don't have to shit in a bush."
     "Civilization has its advantages, a?"
     "And we can leave all that violence behind?"
     The way she said that... was plaintively hopeful. I nodded. "We've gone further today than we could have in three days on the road. I can't see how they could keep up."
     She watched me, the light of another world washing across her features as the screen flickered. "You think so?"
     "I really hope so," I said as I stripped off. "Rraerch and Chaeitch didn't know about this. It should have come as just as much a surprise to our friends out there. And Bluebetter will have troops hunting them down soon enough."
     "That's... reassuring," she said. I saw her ears twitch back as she shivered.
     "They're doing something," I said as I folded my clothes. "They've got a real interest in keeping us safe. I'd imagine other countries wouldn't be impressed if something happened to us, so they're doing all they can."
     "A," she said, looking a bit more reassured. "That's... what are you doing?"
     "What?" I paused, sleeping bag in hands. "I thought we might get some sleep?"
     "In that?" she said. "You have a bed. It's a good bed. See? It's even long enough for you."
     "But not really big enough for two, a? Anyway, I'm quite used to sleeping on floors, under trees, in old houses and barns..."
     She chittered a bit. "It's wide enough. We just have to be... close."
     "Quite close."
     "A... quite close," she said.
     "How close did you have in mind?" "Huhnnn, let's see. Come here. Come on," she growled and when I was near enough she caught my hand, drawing me in. I wriggled in alongside and we discovered she was right: there was enough room. We just had to get close, then a bit closer still.

At dawn we woke to another town outside the porthole and the sounds of distant industry as bunkers were filled with coal. Rris workers hurried to and fro and I could hear vendors in a dockside market hawking their goods. For us passengers there was time for a proper wash and then a civilized breakfast at a real table. Before we were finished the Pigeon was under way again, the engines thumping away as they got up to speed. After the full breakfast and some time making small-talk and dodging questions from Hedia, the shipboard Bluebetter medic took a look over my wounds. The visibly nervous Rris snipped a couple of the stitches on my scalp wound, washed the one on my leg with alcohol and proclaimed it to be healing, but I'd have another scar to add to my collection.
     After that Chihirae and I spent some time up on deck, getting some fresh air and frostbite. Funnily enough we seemed to have some time to ourselves. Chaeitch and Rraerch were in a meeting with Hedia and the mediators seemed to be off with Makepeace somewhere. That was a bit worrying: if they weren't talking to me, then they were probably talking about me. Chihirae reminded me that it wasn't always about me.
     Sightseeing wasn't on the menu that morning. Fog and snow reduced the world to the inside of an egg. Visibility was only a couple of dozen meters and beyond that was an amorphous grey murk. Somewhere up there was a sun, but the only light getting through was a diffuse and cold pale glow. White flakes swirled through the icy dry air, sticking to anything they touched. Speed was cut right back, with lookouts up on the prow peering into the gloom and shouting out warnings about anything that might possibly pose a hazard. The fog froze on anything it touched, coating the decks and railings in ice which crew went about busily breaking and scraping away.
     That sort of weather would've been perfect for another unwelcome surprise. It was silly: I knew we must've put ground between us and our pursuers and there shouldn't have been anything to worry about, but there was always a nagging feeling that something unpleasant was lurking just out of sight in the fog. That's just paranoia — perfectly normal after you've been drowned and hunted and beaten. We returned to the warmth of the saloon. With the dining table hoisted up out of the way into the ceiling there was a lot more room. Plenty of space for us to settle ourselves with paper and pens on cushions near a window where Chihirae continued my education.
     Chaeitch, Rraerch and Hedia turned up after a while. "Hai, Mikah, Teacher," Chaeitch cheerfully greeted us. "Good morning. Still on the reading and writing?"
     "A," she said. "Making slow progress."
     "If there's anything we can do to be of assistance," Hedia offered.
     "Thank you, Ma'am," Chihirae said. "It is, I think, not so simple. Our writing doesn't... fit him."
     "I'm not sure I understand."
     "It's like the trouble I have with words," I offered. "I know I don't pronounce some very well. I can't: my mouth is the wrong shape. The writing is similar: my eyes and mind are... the wrong shape so I have trouble... pronouncing it."
     "I see," Hedia replied and I could see she didn't entirely comprehend but was being diplomatic.
     "He's improving though," Chihirae said. "I've had students who weren't as quick."
     "Give him a few more years and he'll be reading like a three year old," Chaeitch added.
     "Ahead of you then, a?" Chihirae retorted and I laughed.
     Hedia looked from one of us to the other, as if trying to figure out if we were having her on. Eventually she just politely inclined her head. "Incidentally," she said, "you might be interested to know we have just left Water Pass, so we're out of the Rippled Lands. This fog is usual around here this time of year, but it will clear. With good weather it should only be three days at most downriver and then across the bay to Red Leaves."
     "That's good news," Rraerch said. "Always welcome."
     "Any news about our attackers?" I asked.
     Hedia froze for just a fraction of a second, then gestured negative. "Apart from what you've told us there's been no news of any bandit, thief or raider activity on the Trail. It's been quiet. Remarkably so."
     "And ahead of us?"
     "We've enquired," she said. "But we won't know for sure until we reach the next town. However, there was no mention of any local troubles on our way up."
     "Thank you," I said. "That's reassuring."

The day passed by like the landscape outside: quietly, smoothly and reassuringly uneventfully. That was a pleasant change. There were more writing lessons, some grammar and vocab and then some history. I learned a bit more about the river we were on, the fighting that had gone on before the borders settled. I asked if Chihirae knew about the signal towers. She said she'd seen mention in some books, but that was about all. There were still arguments about if they were practical.
     We finished up when they wanted to prepare the saloon for dinner. So there was some time to get outside again. The fog had cleared, as Hedia had promised it would. The darkening sky was streaked with high cloud, feathered east to west as if smeared by a giant finger. And those high mares tails were flaming in the light of a sun already below the horizon. When the dinner was ready it was hot and filling: bison steaks and carefully cooked sweet potato served with blood, honey, and suet fritters. Not as bad as they sound, really. The wine was a good one, properly aged, light and ever so slightly sweet, not like a lot of the strongly tart vintages that come from a lot of Rris vineyards. Table talk was conversations about the day and about the immediate future along with occasional queries directed to me by Hedia or Aesh Rurusi. They were mostly harmless little questions about where I'd come from and my life there, not enough technical details for the Mediators to step in. In fact, I did think they were being remarkably low-key; barely uttering a sentence between them.
     After the meal a few of us headed outside. The icy deck had been sanded down. The sun was gone, stars glittering overhead, occasionally eclipsed by smoke and constellations of swirling sparks spilling from the ships funnel. Chaeitch and Hedia had their pipes lit and were discussing the respective merits of their favorite weed.
     "Mikah."
     I looked around to find Rohinia at the railing beside me. He was just wearing a quilted vest and kilt and cold wind ruffled his facial fur, but he just blinked placidly out at the river. "Makepeace has asked to speak with you."
     "A?" I looked back behind him. There were crew about their duties, but I didn't see her.
     "No, not here. Her cabin. She wants to talk with you. I understand it is a private matter."
     "She asked you to tell me?"
     He twitched an ear. "She didn't. But I understand private, a?"
     "Oh," I said. I didn't understand. Not entirely. "Now?"
     "A."
     I frowned, drummed a quick staccato on the rail with my fingers, then said to the other curious Rris, "Please, excuse me."
     "Of course," Hedia said, looking a little puzzled. Chaeitch just puffed his pipe, eyes gleaming.
     The guards inside nodded politely as I ducked in through the door. Just as Makepeace stepped out of her cabin. "Huhn, sir," she said, tail lashing. "I was... I was wanting to talk with you."
     "So I heard," I said.
     She seemed to think for a second, then stepped back, holding the door open. "If you would, sir?"
     I entered. She closed the door behind me.
     Her cabin was smaller than mine: a deep closet really. It was still elegantly finished, with lustrous wooden paneling and a brass-rimmed porthole in the narrow wall opposite, right above a small, cabin-wide desk with a cushion. There was a narrow shelf with an inset basin and jug of water. A small gas-lamp spilled a meager ration of ruddy light.
     "Please, sir." Makepeace said as she bustled past me and pulled a strap on the paneled wall to fold down a narrow bed. "You can sit."
     I didn't. "What's this about?"
     She looked extremely uncertain. "Sir, you know you did say that you owed me?"
     I swallowed. Hard. "A," I cautiously acknowledged. "I did."
     "I would like to collect on that," she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
     I looked at the bed. At her. "Is this you asking... or them?"
     Her eyes flickered; an expression of embarrassment or awkwardness. "They did ask, sir. I'm asking you now, sir. That is... if you really intended what you said."
     I sighed and sat down on the bed beside her. The pallet was a lot thinner and narrower than the mattress Chihirae and I had. "I did," I said, dreading what was going to come next.
     "Then, sir, I wanted to ask you for a true answer to this question: what have you done that you are most ashamed of?"
     I blinked. "What?"
     "Your kind, I mean. What do think the worst thing your kind has done? Oh, rot, is that right way to ask?"
     That wasn't what I'd... I opened my mouth, then laughed in relief and leaned back against the wall. Makepeace was looking confused and worried. "That's it? That's all you're asking?"
     "A, sir," she said and then in a smaller voice asked, "It's acceptable?"
     "It is. It's..." I thought for a while and had to say. "I'm relieved. It's a good question."
     "You will answer truthfully?"
     How would she be able to tell if I didn't? "A, I'll try," I said. "It's difficult."
     "You don't know?"
     "No. It's just that there's so much."
     Her eyes widened, looking almost hurt.
     "Hey, we're not perfect," I shrugged. "And we've had more time than you to make mistakes that we don't always learn from. Something that's the worst..? I just have to think about it for a bit."
     "A. Yes, sir," she said, looking relieved.
     "And that's it, is it?" I asked. "You could ask anything of me, and you choose to ask a question for those two? You could've had money, or more of those books, or access to the Palace library... whatever you wanted."
     "Yes, sir. But... they asked, sir," she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
     I sighed. "Sometimes you've got to know when to say no."
     "Yes, sir."
     I gave her a hard look, wondering if she was having me on, but she seemed sincere. "Let me think about your question. A?"
     "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." She cocked her head. "If I may ask one other thing: why were you relieved by that question?"
     "Oh, I thought this might've been about sex."
     She looked confused. "Why is that, sir?"
     "Um, those Mediators have a... they have a ridiculous notion that I might be coercing people with sex," I explained and shrugged again. It sounded stupid when I said it aloud. "They've been annoying about it. I thought they might have asked you to... ask me."
     "Oh." She blinked. "I have heard you at night. It didn't sound like coercion. I thought you were enjoying yourselves."
     "That's what I thought too," I said, hesitated, then asked. "Makepeace, may I ask you something?"
     "I... huhn, of course, sir."
     "Does it... how do I say this? Make her look bad?"
     "What, sir?"
     "Us. Her and me. I mean, look at me," I gestured, pretty pointlessly. "She's Rris. I'm not Rris. Do people ridicule her for having sex with me?"
     "Oh, it's not the sex, sir," she said and then her ears went back flat — a panicked look, as if she'd said something she shouldn't have.
     I paused. "Then... what is it?"
     "I..." In the feeble glow of the gas lamp Makepeace looked like a trapped animal. "I shouldn't say, sir."
     "It's about her and me, yes?"
     "Saaa... A, sir. But... oh, rot. I really don't think I... You won't answer my question if I don't tell you?"
     I hesitated. "No. I'll answer. I did promise, and I stand by that."
     A quick sigh escaped her. "Thank you, sir."
     "But if you want me to deal levelly with you in the future, I'd advise you to do the same with me."
     I could see the indecision there. Eyeshine flashed as she looked around, as if trying to find help, then she sagged. "Yes, sir."
     "Then what is it?"
     She fidgeted. I waited for her to get her words together. "Sir, your kind stay together for life? Like swans?"
     "Not always. We're adaptable, but it happens a lot. Why? Is that what people talk about?"
     "Well, yes, sir."
     That puzzled me. Was that worse than gossip about our sex life? "Is it that concerning?"
     "It's... not usual, sir."
     "I know it's happened before. That Living Hall in the Palace grounds — the Rris who made that stayed together for life, didn't they? So they..."
     "But they were insane," she said quietly.
     That was a punch to my gut. I stopped mid-sentence. That was something no-one had mentioned. "Insane."
     "A, sir," she said, twisting her hand around — not quite an affirmative or negative. "People who live like that tend to be. Or perhaps one of them is. That sort is... is not normal. They cling to the other... They can obsess about it. Bad things happen."
     "'Bad things'."
     Her ears went back flat again. "Oh, shave it, sir," she said, distressed. "Bad things; strange behavior; obsessions; people abducted or hurt or worse... They are alarming. They make alarming stories. People remember those. That is why the stories persist."
     I remembered her at the University, helping me dredge through old stories for hints of other humans in my situation. Was that why she was assigned to that job? An expert on their versions of scary campfire stories? I was a bogeyman? I chewed that over. "They think I'm... like that?"
     "Sir, with respect, you are strange. You do strange things. There have been rumors. I don't know details: things you've done. Saying you're keeping her, that she can't leave, that you're..." she trailed off. "That it's as the officers say."
     I sat quietly, digesting that. The engine noise was louder in her cabin, closer to the engine rooms. Eventually I found my voice. "Does she know any of this?"
     "I couldn't say, sir. Probably."
     "Nobody has ever told me this before."
     "It's not common, sir. That was a reason that story about Kathrik and Chita has stayed around."
     I'd thought it romantic tale. To them it wasn't. It was quite the opposite: it was a cautionary tale. "I was told they were considered... odd. That was all."
     "A, sir. And driven enough to make the Hall."
     Which was, by any standards, a masterwork. Was this usual for their artists? I shuddered.
     "Sir?" "Thank you, Makepeace," I told her and shook my head as I stood. "You've given me a lot to think about."
     I left her, sitting there in the dim red light of her cramped cabin and looking horribly concerned.

"You're quiet," she murmured above the pulse of the engine in the darkness. The bed shifted as she rolled over, her fur tickling and scratching as it brushed against me under the sheets. "Since you spoke with Makepeace. Something happened?"
     "Something, a," I grudgingly acknowledged.
     A low chitter. "You know I'm not concerned if you had sex with her."
     "It wasn't anything like that!"
     "But it was something."
     I didn't know how to broach that subject, so I didn't exactly lie. "She had an odd question."
     "A? What was it."
     I told her what Makepeace had asked me.
     "That was it?" Chihirae asked me in the warm darkness of our cabin. She sounded dubious.
     "A. That was it."
     "What're you going to tell her?"
     "The truth. When I figure it out."
     She was silent. I could feel her breathing, thinking, for a while before she said, "That moving picture you showed me, about the war and that list and those camps... ?" she left the rest of that question unasked.
     "That was bad, but that wasn't the worst. An ally of ours in that war committed far worse crimes. And we were supposed to be the good side."
     "But why..."
     "Politics," I sighed into the nape of her neck. "There are so many things that are terrible, but when seen and compared with other things over hundreds of years later, they are... not lessened, but perhaps... watered down? No, we've done things that seemed fine on the surface at the time, but over time have proven to be worse than anything done deliberately."
     "Mistakes, I think those are called."
     "A. You're right. Should I be ashamed of mistakes? Or deliberate acts?"
     "Huhn," she growled softly and patted my chest with a velvet hand. "Perhaps you shouldn't overthink this. I don't think there is a right answer. They asked for your opinion, didn't they?"
     "A."
     "There you are."
     "I just think if I say the wrong thing, it'll come back to bite me."
     She chittered briefly. "I'm sorry. That just sounds like a very Rris thing to say."
     "Is it wrong?"
     "No. No, it's not. That's why you should say just what you have to. Keep it simple and true and give them what they asked for."
     I considered that. It was sound advice. "A. Alright. Thank you."
     "That was all it was?"
     I hesitated. "Have you heard of Kathrik and Chita?"
     "Huhnn," she made a thoughtful sound. "The names sound familiar, but I can't immediately say yes. Why do you ask?"
     "Just something I heard today that I was wondering about."
     "Serious?"
     "I hope not," I said, quite sincerely. "There's quite enough to worry about."
     She shifted again on the narrow bed, laying one hairy leg over mine. "Just a few more days and we'll be there. No more bandits and guns. No more flea-ridden inns or cramped carriages and boats."
     "Hedia did apologize for the... small accommodations. They don't have much space. I can sleep on the floor if you want..."
     "Stop that," she snapped, literally, at my nose. "I've seen Makepeace's cabin — this is an open field by comparison. But some room to move will be nice. Oh, rot, and the first thing I want is a real bath. One I can stretch out in. And a good groomer to get these tangles out."
     "So I'm not a good groomer?" I teased.
     "Oh, you're good, but you're not Guild."
     "Could I apply for membership?" I asked, scratching at that spot behind her ears.
     "Oh, it would take a lot of training," she rumbled. "An apprenticeship for years. Then the applications and Guild approval and the growing of fur and a tail and ears and..."
     "I can just stop doing this, you know."
     "Or I could vouch for you. I'm sure they'd listen to me."
     "Oh, would you? I would be ever so grateful."
     "Huhn? Really? You know, you could do with a trim as well. You are starting to resemble the wrong end of a bear."
     "You say the nicest things."
     In the darkness her hand fluffed at my beard and she made an amused noise. "Certainly something'll have to be done before Red Leaves if you want to make a favorable impression: trim that face fur and take your mane in a bit..."
     It was a bit of playful banter in the night. It was just enough to take my mind off the questions that I desperately wanted to ask but just as equally didn't want an answer to. They still lurked there though, percolating away in the back of my mind even as I fell asleep with her breathing gently beside me.

Once we passed through the final water gap the Rippled Lands were behind us and the lay of the world changed. The regular procession of tired mountainous ridges rolling across the landscape petered out. The river broadened, slowed, the dark water curling and roiling lazily as if relaxing on its final leg to the sea. It was no longer overshadowed by steep outcroppings or compelled to carve its way around granite hillsides, rather it could flow through loam and soft soil. Now, there was a horizon again. Endless tracts of forests marched away to the edge of the sky in the distance and down to flood plains and marshy lands scumbling the edges of the river. Those marshes ran deep, the frosted reeds and ice backing up for kilometers. The road no longer ran along the riverbanks. Instead it skirted the woods on the far edges of the wetlands, occasionally visible where it bridged a tributary or rose on embankments from flood-prone land. Villages and towns also kept their distance from the water and avoided low-laying terrain. Settlements that did come down to the river's edge sprawled across hilltops and other high ground and nestled behind extensive and expensivelooking levees and revetments. Hedia confirmed that spring flooding could be a problem in this area.
     There was another stop to take on fuel. The town was a decent-sized one, a hub for trade on the river and for the surrounding countryside with docks large enough for the Pigeon. There was coal waiting, along with supplies including baked goods: bread, pies, rolls, and biscuits. They were all freshly baked and I'd wondered how they'd known they were required and to have them ready. The heliograph system, of course. Too expensive for everyday business use, but they were willing to utilize it to make sure their guests were catered to. Or perhaps they were trying to show off. Or perhaps... something else.
     A few hours filling the bunkers and then we set off again. The skies were clear, the sun bright and the air cold and brittle. Still, not as bad as it'd felt up in the mountains. I saw a trio of wolves drinking from the riverside, looking up to watch the Pigeon as it steamed past at the point of a wake of grey smoke, soot and embers. Hedia kept regularly asked me if there was anything I required. Chihirae continued my lessons in language and reading and the saloon, but otherwise the Rris gave me some space. I wondered if the Mediators had something to do with that; they were always around in the background, keeping an eye on me. Giving me time to think.
     That was a mixed blessing.
     My written vocabulary was improving, but my ability to actually string those words together into forms Rris found coherent was still lagging. Through the day Chihirae had me go through exercises, writing down simple sentences. But the rules always seemed arbitrary to me. I could lay down the basic sentence structure in their scratch-like crosshatched writing, but when it came to go back along the simple structure and add the modifiers to subjects and nouns and predicates, I always seemed to get something wrong. And that something seemed to vary depending on sentence tense, case or usage in a paragraph — if that's what you could call the structure cluster the segments occupied.
     "It's something you learn over time," Chihirae had reassured me, but I was already aware I was learning their written language a lot slower than any Rris cub normally picked it up.
     That evening I took another walk around the deck. The sun was low behind the mountains, now little more than a line of cloud on the western horizon. The winter chill nipped at my cheeks and my breath frosted out in clouds like the Pigeon's smokestack. Up on deck there were never guards far away, either Land-of-Water's or Bluebetter's. The ship wasn't that big and it wasn't practical to expect all the troops to spend all their time crammed into the holds, so the stretched their legs on deck just like the rest of us. I knew they weren't supposed to interact with me, so the Bluebetter guard I approached and asked to see his firearm laid his ears flat in panic, frantically looking around at other frozen guards for support. I saw Hedia watching, then wave an unobtrusive little 'yes' gesture and the guard unstiffened enough to hold the weapon out to me at arm's length.
     By my standards it was small and lightweight, suiting the stature of the general user. The stock was solid and well-polished, but without any of the carving or giltwork I'd seen on older Rris weapons. It was a breech loader, with a bolt opening a simple chamber. No magazine though, just extra rounds on a bandolier worn by the guard, which put it a generation behind the carbines the Land-of-Water guards carried. The barrel was rifled and made from new steel. The breechblock was well-fitted, well-oiled and obviously machine tooled. It opened smoothly. The bore looked about the same width as the Land-of-Water weapons. That was larger than one might expect on a small weapon like that, but since they were still using black powder as a propellant the bullets needed more surface area. The slow burn rate meant that the slugs had to be fairly fat and the Bluebetter ones seemed about the same size as the Land-of-Water rounds, but without measuring I couldn't be sure. Surely they wouldn't be so blatant as to use the same caliber rounds? Probably close, but not exactly the same. That standardization issue again.
     "Mikah?" Rohinia was right beside me, casually standing just close enough to... "What are you doing?" he asked mildly.
     "Inspecting the product," I said just as casually. "Look, cleaning kit in the stock. Not a bad idea that." I handed the weapon back and thanked the guard who still looked as if an elk had asked him for the time of day.
     "What was that about?" Rohinia asked me.
     "Just looking," I said. "Do you know if Land-of-Water was trading the plans for machine tools? Or steel alloys?"
     "I really couldn't say," he said blandly.
     "Ah," I nodded and squinted into the chill breeze blowing in from the coast. "Just a coincidence then."
     "Doubtless," he agreed.
     The sun was gone. Evening meal was eaten at the polished table on silver dinnerware under flickering gas lamps as blue faded from the sky and stars came out. The food was hot and filling and there was plenty of it. Conversation was polite and lightweight, avoiding politics and work. Hedia asked me some questions about my old life, simple things about my world that I answered and the Mediators didn't seem to have any trouble with.
     After dinner a few folk headed outside to talk some more in what they considered a pleasantly cool evening. We gathered on the foredeck, the Rris lighting up, their breath mixing with the curling of smoke from their pipe bowls. Overhead a billion, billion stars stippled together across the nebulous arch of the Milky Way, a three-quarters moon gleamed like a new dime, and beneath it all the winter landscape was silver and black. Under the prow the water was dark oil, the occasional floe of ice almost fluorescing against it. Chaeitch asked Hedia if he might be able to see the engine room.
     "I'm afraid that area is restricted," she replied.
     "I wouldn't mind having a look," I added, just to see what would happen.
     "It is a hazardous area," she said smoothly. "I would hate to have to explain an injury to his lordship."
     "I have been in engine rooms before," I smiled. "Compared with other places I've been, they seem quite safe. Nobody has ever shot at me in an engine room."
     "Really, sir..." now she looked a little troubled. Chaeitch she could refuse, but me... it was interesting to see how far I could push. "It's filthy down there, sir. Noisy and quite unpleasant."
     "Been there, done that. You're worried about trade secrets?" I almost laughed. "You might want to think about that a bit."
     One of her assistants, Kestirae, hastened forward and whispered something in a tufted ear. Which twitched. She murmured a reply, thought for a second and then smiled pleasantly at us. "Very well. I believe we can accommodate you."
     It was warmer down below decks. Considerably. The Pigeon wasn't intended as a seagoing vessel but rather was designed for shallower rivers and therefore had a high waterboard and a very shallow draft. That meant there wasn't a deep keel and not lot of space below the waterline. Stability came from putting most of the really heavy stuff down as low as they could. Engine, boilers, bunkers and tanks, holds... all that weighty stuff was low and centered in the wide hull. Still wouldn't want to take it out in heavy seas. The captain escorted Hedia, Chaeitch, Rraerch, Rohinia, and myself down a narrow companionway into parts of the ship that weren't so elegantly finished, and certainly weren't intended for someone of my stature. I bent almost double to get through corridors that Rris had to duck their heads for. There was no polished wood down there: it was creosoted seasoned timbers and black iron piping that dripped water. Small but heavy doors lined the corridor. As we approached the source of the noise that permeated the vessel the temperature went from winter chill to summer in a sauna.
     The engine room... was what you'd expect from an engine room. It wasn't a majestic and grandiose temple to driving machinery, but rather a closed space filled with hissing, chuffing, dripping, and scalding hot metal insinuated in the middle of the ship like a larvae in its cocoon. Rris stokers worked relentlessly to feed the fires heating the boilers. They were all completely stripped and doused with cold water so their water-slicked hides clung to them, glistening and steaming in the heat and red light from the roaring maws of the furnaces, two to each boiler. And the boilers themselves were man-high barrels of steel and black iron and brass fittings, each one spewing out high-pressure steam for the multi-stage engines.
     Sure, it sounds easy. In principle it's a simple thing. However, none of that technology was in use before I'd arrived. Two years ago the Rris only had low pressure, single-cycle engines, and their boilers weren't up to spec for high-pressure. Try putting those newer pressures through riveted copper and cast iron boilers and... well, I knew damn well what happened. I'd introduced new ideas in design and metallurgy that provided a leap of a century in the space of a few months. And when the prototypes had proven a success, the Rris had gone after the new technologies with a will. At least until the Mediator Guild realized what was going on.
     The Bluebetter engineering was using older ideas. Similar to the technology used in the ill-fated Ironheart, but refined. That could mean a few things. The option that jumped out was that they'd bought the information from the same source in the Land-of-Water government who'd sold them the new weapons. That conduit had been closed to them, but the Bluebetter engineers had worked with and developed what they had, along with anything else they had acquired since then.
     So the Pigeon's engines weren't as efficient as the newest designs. They ate through coal at a prodigious rate, but they worked, provided ample power, and were proving reliable. The mechanisms themselves were prodigious constructs of cast iron, tooled steel and brass, glistening with grease and dripping water. Gleaming reciprocating pistons on iron armatures thumped in and out with the sound of dragons breathing on every stroke, turning wheels which spun shafts driving gearboxes which in turn drove shafts to the paddles. That meant each paddle could be driven at different speeds, or even opposite directions. Chaeitch was very interested in those gearboxes, and that didn't surprise me: stripped gears had always been problem in the powerful drivetrains he was trying to design. The Bluebetter officials danced around the answer a little — it was possible they actually didn't know — but what was eventually revealed was that they didn't have working clutches and the drive train had to be disengaged entirely for certain gear changes.
     Hedia had been right: it was cramped and noisy and dirty and hot, but it was worth seeing. Chaeitch was certainly getting his money's worth, poking into every corner while Hedia visibly tried to keep a lid on her anxiety. We spent over an hour down there, by then end of which I was sweating and the Rris were panting furiously and we were all dusted in coal dust. We worked our way back topside to fresh air and cold drinks and Chaeitch looked pleased and proclaimed it all, "Most instructive."
     I scrubbed up before bed. The washcloth quickly turned grey, as did the hot water splashing into the porcelain sink. But there was no shortage of it and I didn't scrimp, lathering up with coarse soap and rubbing down until the water ran clear. In the small mirror over the basin I could see Chihirae sitting cross-legged on the bed, leaning back against the wall and watching me with eyes like two specks of sunlight in darkness.
     "Entertaining show?" I asked, toweling off.
     "Oh, very," she said. "A naked ape is always worth the price of admission. You look interesting wet. And you smell cleaner also."
     "'Interesting'?"
     She gestured affirmative. "The way the water changes the light on you," she said causally. "Oh, while you were getting dirty down there Makepeace asked me if you had decided?"
     "On that answer?"
     "A."
     "A," I said. "I think so. I just want to consider it a little more in case there's something I'm missing."
     "Not overthinking it, a?"
     "I don't think so," I grinned.
     She snorted. "Don't tease her, Mikah. I really don't think she should be here."
     "I know," I agreed. "But she's done well. She's been through a lot and is still going. Almost as good as you."
     In the mirror I saw her eyes blinked lazily. "You flatter."
     "Never. Nothing but the truth," I said, gingerly parting my hair to inspect the wound on my head. It was healing; the bruising was subsiding. Same with my chest — that only twinged if I moved wrong. The cut on my leg had let me know it was still there while climbing the stairs and that was healing slower, still an angry red gash under the stitches. They'd have to come out sometime. More scars. More mementos of what some idiots might call adventure. And they were starting to add up. As was that feeling that whenever I looked in a mirror the person staring back was... wrong. It wasn't me, but rather an alien staring back from the glass. I sometimes startled myself. The face simply didn't fit with all the others around it.
     "Mikah?" Chihirae's prompt snapped me back to the here and now. She'd said something I missed.
     "Huh?" I looked around, "Sorry, what was that?"
     "Do you want to tell me what you're thinking of telling her? I might be able to offer some suggestions."
     "Oh." I tossed the towel back onto its hook and turned back to the bed. "That... that wouldn't annoy the Mediators?"
     She snorted. "Rot, it's supposed to be her question, isn't it?"
     "Supposed to be," I agreed. "A."
     "So it's not officially Guild business, is it? A? Rot, come here," she patted the bed, moving her legs to let me settle myself beside her and laid a velvet paw on my thigh. "You want to tell me?"
     "Okay," I sighed, leaned back and did so while she listened quietly and attentively. When I was done we just sat there for a minute. In silence.
     "That's it, a?" she eventually asked.
     "A. What do you think?"
     "I think..." she started to say thoughtfully. "You know that the Mediators will get their teeth into that. They might use it against you."
     "I know."
     "And you'll still say it?"
     "A," I nodded, stirring the fur on the back of her hand with a fingertip. "But... I'm... I don't want to say it in a way that they'll twist it like that. I'm trying to say it in the way I intend it to mean. Am I?"
     "Huhn," she patted my leg. "It's close, my strange one. Close. But perhaps I can offer a few suggestions?"

The Pigeon steamed on through the night. Sometime in the early hours of the morning there was another stop to refuel and take on another rivermaster. The noises reverberating through the hull disturbed me just enough for me to bother lifting my head to see over the snoring furry lump beside me, realize it was still dark outside and fall asleep again almost immediately.
     Come waking and breakfast we were already under way again. A deep blue sky hung overhead, a few stars still glimmering and competing with the glow of dawn. The river was dark and slow and wide, the ripples of the wake spreading behind us dying away long before they reached the ice congealed along the distant shores. The snow-bound forests there were old, old and vast. Winter bare branches scratched at the sky and evergreens bowed under the weight of ice and snow; uncountable numbers of pine and birch and maple and willow and elm and alder and paw-paw and sycamore filled the world from ocean to plains. Rris civilization had cut swathes through them for farmland and timber, but there were still measureless miles of wild wood out there.
     And the blessing of the river travel was that we were moving past all that, not through it. And we might not have been moving faster than an elk could run, but the roads were poor and we could keep the pace up all day. There was no way anyone was going to be stalking us on foot. And that knowledge was amazingly reassuring: I could relax and actually feel relaxed, not worry about something jumping out at us.
     More lessons in the saloon that day. I'd asked some questions about the towns we'd passed through and Chihirae had known only broad strokes of local history. Hedia had observed and offered some contributions which proved to be a lot more detailed. And other Bluebetter officers also knew tidbits about the local area. Maps were produced and spread out and the lesson was sidetracked into a detailed exposition on Bluebetter's foundation: the multitudes of tiny kingdoms and city states that had originally precipitated along the east coast, whose boundaries and influences had oscillated back and forth in complex knots of conquests and treaties and civil wars. The history of the Ashansi Trail proved to be particularly bloody, with the individual city states along its length each determined to control the passage from interior to sea. Successive layers of tariffs that they all levied had strangled trade and almost all had refused to back down.
     So the river wars had been particularly chaotic. Alliances formed and shifted like the contents of a lava lamp. There was always fighting or sieges or block-headed posturing and standoffs. The Mediator Guild of the time was certainly active, but nobody was really clear on what they were doing — assisting one faction sometimes; condemning them and supporting someone else another.
     A little influence in the right place. A nudge here, a claw there...
     And as time went by the river city states had fallen or capitulated or simply collapsed and been absorbed by others. And then they joined in alliances or conquests and so on and so forth and, hey-presto, Bluebetter appeared. Well, perhaps not quite that simply, but that was the CliffNotes version of it. An evolution that had more in common with the birth of European nations than the formation of my United States, but with elements that — when scrutinized — made it quite clear you weren't dealing with a human history.
     The presence of the Guild for one — the times through those centuries when they brokered treaties, influenced rulers, or simply used force of arms. The only human organization I could think of to compare them with might be the Knights Templar, but the Guild seems to garner more respect than that organization did without the underlying concept of religion. And there weren't kings or people who led by sheer force of will and whom people followed because, well, they were leaders, weren't they? The Rris followed those who rose to the occasion, the people who got things done. If they started to screw up or got too full of themselves, the followers just wandered off. Yet it wasn't what you could call a meritocracy.
     The thing about aliens is... they're weird.
     So I listened through the history lessons and asked questions which, from the looks the Bluebetters gave me must've been fairly elementary ones. But, hell, there was a whole world of history for me to catch up on. To date my tutors had concentrated mainly on Land-of-Water and significant events that affected nations, not the little skirmishes that had built those nations.
     Over time the city-states had merged into larger states and kingdoms. In turn those had — through force or necessity — annealed until the realms had formed, including the one known as Bluebetter. The precise stories of how the borders had found their places were as many and varied as the ones back home and went some way to explaining things like Hunting Well's odd little annex and just why some borders were at a particular river and not another.
     The maps Hedia produced were navigation charts and a few maps of the local area. The charts in particular were extremely detailed, hundreds of velum pages loosely bound in a huge leather-covered folio showing every bend in the river, every islet and tributary as well as the towns along the way. All with their own histories and stories that we didn't have time to scratch the surface of. But I was able to see the route we were taking in more detail. Red Leaves was located right at the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay, southwest of where Philadelphia had been; perhaps... around the Newark area? The topography was similar, but not identical: the river, for example, swung around in a loop to enter what I'd known as the Chesapeake bay further north. That situated the capitol of Red Leaves between the upper reaches of Devouring Water and Mud Foot — Chesapeake and Delaware — bays. So the city had convenient access to both. No wonder they were more interested in seafaring than Land of Water.
     Chaeitch and Rraerch sat and listened and occasionally participated, but mostly they enjoyed the bottle of old wine they'd acquired. The Mediators watched and listened quietly. Makepeace lurked on the fringes for a while, fidgeting and glancing at the Mediators. When I looked her way a little later, she'd gone.
     With something to keep us occupied the day passed quickly. In the afternoon there was an unscheduled stop at a small town. Hedia assured us it was nothing to be concerned about. Indeed, we were only idling at the dock for about fifteen minutes while locals gathered and gawked. I did notice that the town had a signal tower and as we set off again it flashed into life. I guessed someone wanted to send a text.
     The clear skies didn't last. Low cloud drifted in, the horizon slowly vanishing behind grey mist. As the sun went down it started snowing again, fat flakes swirling and mixing with the smoke and embers from the smoke stacks. A slow fall at first, but when some of us ventured out on deck after the evening meal for some fresh air and conversation it was coming down steadily and heavily. Each gas lamp was surrounded by an aura of chaotic white where drifting snow seemed to simply materialize from the darkness.
     Chihirae was standing over by the railing back toward the wheels, chatting away with Chaeitch. I heard them laugh aloud at something. She was wearing the shawl that Hiesh had given her draped over her head and ears and shoulders to keep the snow off. The dark blue was lost in the darkness and the silver threads caught the highlights from the lamps. She looked otherworldly.
     "They get on well together," someone said to me. I looked around at Rraerch.
     "Oh. A, they do."
     "That doesn't worry you?" she asked. "He said that after he visited her for spring you were... upset."
     I leaned on the icy railing and tipped my hand in a no. "I was. I shouldn't have been. It's... good for her."
     "Oh," she said and was quiet for a bit, glancing over at them. "You know he can't protect her."
     I tried to figure out what she meant. "I think if something happens to me he won't have to. I just want to know she won't end up out on the street."
     "That's what you're concerned about?" she flicked an ear. "In that case just keep teaching her your language. If something happens to you she'll be the only one who can read it."
     "And that would be a good thing?"
     She waggled her hand in a shrug. "It would be a bargaining chip. Perhaps a great deal of power for one individual."
     The idea had merit, and of course a downside. "Have you seen Makepeace?" I asked, to change the subject. "There was something I wanted to talk to her about."
     "I haven't seen her since mealtime," Rraerch said thoughtfully. "Her cabin, I think."
     I thanked her and used the excuse to get in out of the cold and, on my way down, to stop off at the facilities.
     Which, while nicely appointed, were pretty cramped, basic, and inevitably smelled like cat piss. I got in there and stood with my head bowed under the low roof, one hand braced against the wall and aiming with the other. The ship was steady enough, but there was the occasional roll, and the saddle-horn like cup on the front of Rris toilet seats were always a pain for me.
     "Aesh Smither said you wanted to see me, sir."
     I jumped a little and looked around and down into an earnest little hairy face. "Makepeace, ah... you could've waited a minute."
     "Sir?" she just looked confused.
     "I'm urinating," I sighed.
     "Yes, sir?" She didn't seem to get it for a few seconds, then the penny dropped and she blinked and laid her ears back. "Uhn, apologies, sir," she said as she backed out.
     Damn Rris and their lack of inhibitions regarding bodily functions. The toilet had a curtain across it, but that was all. They didn't care about the ablutions themselves, but they did keep making comments about the differences in the plumbing whenever they walked in on me, and that got tiresome.
     When I was done I buttoned up and stepped out into the corridor. She was there, leaning against the wall, waiting. "How do you urinate like that standing up?" she asked. "I've seen males try that after too much drink — they spray all over the place."
     "I'm built a bit differently," I said. "Have you changed your question?"
     "Sorry, sir," she ducked her head. "No, I haven't, sir. Have you had time to consider it?"
     "A," I said.
     "And?"
     "I have an answer," I said to her. "It's complicated... might take a bit of time to explain."
     "I do have some time," she said, almost looking reproachful.
     "Do you want to get your... patrons?"
     "No, sir. I think I can handle this."
     "Okay then" I shrugged. "Bit more room in my cabin. We can talk there."
     The guards gave us a look but kept their mouths shut as we went in. I closed the door behind us and went over to the desk, turned the chair around, took a seat. Makepeace looked around with quick little birdlike twitches of her head. Her nostrils were working and god only knew what she was smelling.
     "Yeah, it's a bit fancier," I said. "I think they're trying to impress me. Have a seat."
     I didn't have any cushions for guests, so she settled herself on one of the steamer trunks. It was that or the floor.
     "You know," I told her, "I can't say whether my answer is right or wrong. You simply asked for an opinion."
     "Yes, sir."
     "Then my answer would be short sightedness."
     She looked puzzled.
     "Not in vision, but in seeing where certain actions might lead. We tend to take the easiest path. And even if someone has looked down it and seen trouble, we'll still go there."
     "Why?"
     "Because it's easy," I shrugged. "Easy means it's cheap, profitable."
     She mulled over this quietly for a few heartbeats. "Sir, can you give examples?"
     "A. Hundreds of years sailors found an island. There was a bird there that was big, good to eat and easy to catch. So they just caught them and ate them, even when it was obvious there were fewer and fewer of them. There are now none left anywhere in the world. That happened more than a few times.
     "More recently, rivers in an area like Shattered Water were catching fire because it was cheaper and easier to throw industrial waste into the water than dispose of it properly. It was only when people started getting ill and dying that people started to take notice. We built an entire economy around a limited fuel source, used it extensively, actively suppressed alternate fuels, and then complained when it started running out. We built cities design for vehicles that run on that fuel and then find the cities become dangerous places to live because of those vehicles. We put off long term benefits for short-term gains. We encourage competition in business because it theoretically produces cheaper and better goods — it also means that there's a vast amount more time and energy and resources wasted in producing redundant items."
     She blinked. "Isn't that sort of thing more apparent in hindsight?"
     "A. Always. And it's a bit... overly-simple, but there've been too many times when warnings or simply past experience were ignored. Times when we should've known better."
     "Why would... Huhn, no Mediators, A?"
     "Perhaps. Perhaps it's just that greed is a more powerful incentive: if there's profit involved, then warnings do nothing. If the problems don't immediately affect those making the money, there's nothing for them to worry about."
     She thought about that a while, watching me with curious amber eyes. Not like the Mediators watched me; it was more openly inquisitive. "That is it?" she eventually asked.
     I spread my hands. "That's it. Not very spectacular, I know, but you asked what I was most ashamed of."
     "Why that?"
     "Because of the waste and the lost, the loss, the lost opportunities. But mainly because so often it's completely unnecessary, yet it still happens. It's... embarrassing."
     "It doesn't seem... entirely different from us, sir," she noted, sounding doubtful.
     "I'm not sure. I still haven't seen enough of your people or history to be sure, but I think there are differences in the way our societies are structured that make it more of a problem for us," I said. "I think our kinds follow leaders for different reasons."
     "A? Can you explain, sir?"
     "Umm, that's difficult," I hedged. "I'm not sure I understand it myself. Politics is one of those things I'm still learning about."
     She thought that over. "You know, sir, what you said is going to influence the way the Guild treats you. They might say that by your own admission you're incapable of deciding what we should do with your knowledge."
     "A. I know," I smiled.
     "You aren't concerned?"
     "Should I be?"
     "I'm afraid I couldn't say, sir," she said, her ears twitching back. "The Guild seldom does anything without a good reason."
     Yeah, they trusted the Mediator Guild like humans trusted authority figures. They believed in the Guild. And I couldn't. Not after I'd seen it almost tear itself in half doing what both sides thought was the right thing. It might have been a stabilizing force in Rris society, but that didn't mean it was inherently right or that it dealt well with change. On the other hand, simply because it was such a keystone in their civilization meant I couldn't simply dismiss it as a ridiculous idea. For the most part, it seemed to work for them.
     "Why did you let them choose your question?" I asked her.
     "Sir?" she blinked. "They asked."
     "You could've said no."
     "I... I don't think I could've, sir."
     "Oh," I nodded. "They asked like that, a?"
     "A."
     I sighed, drummed my fingers on my leg. "Look, I said I owed you. That still stands: I owe you, but you only. If you want a favor, just ask me. I'll do what I can."
     She actually looked startled. "I... thank you, sir."
     "And if you want to ask me questions, just ask them. I've told you before: I don't bite. I'll answer what I can. And don't let the others push you around. They're quite capable of asking their own damn questions. Okay?"
     Now she looked confused.
     "I mean: Is that acceptable?"
     "Yes, sir," Makepeace said. "Thank you, sir."
     I sat back. She was puzzling me. I knew she wasn't stupid, and she was obviously full of questions. Now she was reduced to yessir, nosir, three-bags-full-sir. I took a guess at the reason for that.
     "You can talk to me, you know" I said. "I won't tell them."
     Her ears twitched back again and she didn't meet my eyes. "I said I wouldn't."
     "Ah," I nodded. "They really made you promise that?"
     "They did, sir."
     I shook my head and exhaled in exasperation. "Then I can't ask you to break your word, can I. You've got the answer you wanted?"
     "I believe so, sir," she said and got up. "Thank you for your time, sir. I had best get back."
     "Don't want them wondering what we're up to, a?" I asked.
     She actually flinched and laid her ears back. "No, sir."
     I sighed again. "Hey, it's been fun. We'll have to do this again sometime. And, Makepeace? My name is Michael."

"And that was all she wanted?" Chihirae asked.
     "A," I said.
     "Huhn. I thought she'd lock herself in with you until she'd asked every question she could think of."
     "Mediators," I replied. "I think they gave her very specific instructions."
     "Huhn," she grunted thoughtfully. "That would explain it. I still wonder why they asked that though."
     "What? Ow. Careful."
     "Just stay still."
     It was late. Probably near midnight. The gas lamps hissed quietly. Timbers creaked and groaned with a rhythm like breathing and down beneath it all was thum-thum-thum heartstroke of the engines. The room was warm, the condensation still misting on the glass after my wash. I sat on a cloth spread out on the floor with Chihirae kneeling behind me. I had a towel around my shoulders; she was wearing her fur. Her little grooming kit was unrolled beside us, the assortment of time-worn brushes, combs and scissors gleaming dully. She was raking one of the combs through my hair. Taking the time to try and get me 'presentable' for our arrival the next day.
     "Like a bird's nest," she muttered.
     "Sorry," I said. "I couldn't get an appointment with my usual groomer. What was that about their question?"
     "Why they asked that specific question," she said. "Not, huhr, for example: what are you most proud of about your kind? I mean, they would consider that you wouldn't tell the truth?"
     "Perhaps they thought I'd be honest with her. Perhaps they wanted me to say something like that for another reason."
     "Such as?"
     "I don't know," I shrugged and winced. "Validation for their restrictions?"
     She was quiet for a bit, pulling the comb through my hair, snipping out a stubborn knot.
     "That... would make sense," she eventually said.
     "Strange way to go about it, though."
     "Huhn, you should talk about strange. I'm sure Makepeace will be only too happy to relate the story to her university colleagues on our return. That might grab their tails... slow them down a little and make them a bit more supportive of the Guild caution."
     "They would listen to her?"
     "I think more than if the Guild told them. Huhn, I'm going to have to cut this and then trim your face fur back to a civilized length."
     Chihirae wasn't the greatest barber in the world. Actually, that wasn't true: she was probably the best barber in the world, simply because she was the only one who'd had practice cutting human hair. But that didn't mean she was very good at it. She didn't know anything about layering or any of the other tricks that barbers use to produce something a bit more appealing than a bowl cut. She simply went to work with scissors and knives to chop it back to what she thought was appropriate, which meant that it was still long enough I had to tie it back.
     For my beard she knelt and had me lay down flat on my back on the floor, my head between her knees. I looked up at her looming over me, her winter pelt gleaming with ruddy highlights in the light, cocking her head as she fluffed my beard up and considered the job before her. "Do you trust her?" she asked suddenly.
     "Who? Makepeace?"
     "A."
     "I..." I hesitated. I really didn't know much about her. She was a student at the university and I'd worked with her before, but that didn't mean I knew a lot about her. "She has saved my life."
     She cocked her head the other way, an expression of almost-comical concentration on her face as she snipped with the scissors. "A," she said. "But I did think the circumstances of her joining us were... well, extraordinary."
     "Oh, I've seen stranger. You have a reason not to trust her?"
     "No," she sighed and tapped the cold metal of the scissors against my cheek. "But perhaps under the circumstances it's safer to have reasons to trust first, a? It seems to me to be very like how that doctor came into your life."
     That hit low. I swallowed hard. "You think?"
     "Rot, I'm sorry, Mikah. But, she did join us under very odd circumstances. People think it's a joke, but I'm not sure... That one used a guise of a doctor to get close, didn't she. Is it so outlandish for someone to try the same as a student? Oh, rot, perhaps I'm just seeing lurkers behind every bush."
     She bent to her work. Stubby fingers guided scissors around my neck and jaw, carefully clipping my beard back to a length similar to Rris' facial fur. I considered what she'd said. It was... disturbing. But...
     "I think... Maithris was in Shattered Water long before I was," I said and the scissors paused, hovering at my chin. "I don't know why she was there, but it wasn't for me. I was an opportunity. She... took it."
     Chihirae leaned back, muzzled lowered as she looked down at me.
     "Makepeace," I said. "She's been a student since before I came here. I'm sure not everyone like that could be an agent of some kind. I mean, that would mean you could be."
     "You're sure I'm not?"
     I smiled. "I think the Guild would have investigated you at least as thoroughly as they did Makepeace."
     "A, true," Chihirae said, flicked an ear and brandished her scissors again. "I hope they had fun doing that."
     "I think they are people for whom doing that sort of thing is fun," I said.
     She chittered and leaned forward again, the scissors snipping. "Do you think they do that with everyone you meet?"
     "I think they do now."
     "And how well do you think they do?"
     I hesitated.
     "Mikah, if I said I was from Shar's Stead I think they would have trouble disproving that. There are about three Shar's Steads that I know of and probably more that I don't. Tiny places that don't keep reliable records. And there are untold numbers of places like that; some don't even have names."
     I thought back to Ea'rest. Wasn't that a perfect description of our first encounter? "Do you think it's likely?"
     The scissors paused. "I've talked with Makepeace. She seems all right; like a student. But then, so did that physician, a?"
     "A," I swallowed around a hard lump.
     "Mikah," she said as she fluffed up my beard, eying it critically, "I know it's easier to say something like this than it is to do, but people out there will be trying anything to get close to you. Just be aware."
     "As you say, 'easier said than done'."
     "A, I know," she sighed and clipped some more. A bit from the left, a bit from the right, tipping my chin back and tipping her head to study the results. "Better," she said. "Not so much like a wind-blown haystack."
     "So, I look fabulous?"
     A snort. "You look, as always, like a shaved bear."
     "Oh, so cruel." I reached up, ruffling the thick winter fur of her chest. "What about you? You're looking a bit fuzzy."
     "I'm supposed to," she retorted primly. "Besides, I'm not the one seeing his highness tomorrow. A good impression this time might help, a?"
     I kept stroking her. "I think I could walk in there like this and they would do their best to be friendly."
     "Like that?" she chittered. "I think you would need some more trimming first. There's some more unruly fur down there." She leaned forward.
     "What are you... hey!" I caught her, disarmed her, brought her down to my level. She chittered and fell across me in a furry tangle of limbs, laying her head on my belly. Her eyes glinted as she looked up at me.
     "You know," she said. "This might be the last night for a while we get some time like this."
     "Really?" I touched her face, stroking the fuzz there.
     "Quite," she said. Her own hand was wandering. "Alone. Quiet. Perhaps... we should make the most of it."
     "You have something in mind?" I grinned.
     White flashed as she grinned back, "I thought I might try your tricks."
     "My tricks?" "Those little things you do while we have sex. Clever fingers, clever tongue... I thought I could try... something."
     "What are... Oh..."
     She lowered her head and I inhaled sharply as hot breath washed over my groin, then moist heat and roughness of a sandpaper tongue...
     ... and a flash of white teeth in a snarling red maw just before they tore into my face...
     I flinched. Badly. She startled, looked around at me with a querying expression. "Mikah? You don't like that?"
     "It's... " I croaked through a suddenly-dry throat and swallowed hard. "It's... Your teeth..."
     Her ears went back and in the dim light I saw her pupils dilate. She could see my face perfectly clearly. The scar across my cheek itched. "Oh, rot," she said, then chittered. "A knife at your neck you are fine with, but teeth near your testicles..."
     "Not the same," I protested.
     "Really?" she mused. "You don't like it? I quite enjoyed it when you licked me."
     "I... it's not quite the same," I said, weakly. "I mean you're female. You don't..."
     She chittered again and laid a furry cheek on my belly, smirking up at me. "Mikah, you know most people eat all their meat?"
     "What are... oh." I thought back to meals laden with glistening and unknown organs, appetizers stuffed with mystery meats. Mountain oysters were staple fare here.
     "Of course," she added quietly. "I'll be careful. You trust me?"
     I nodded, hesitantly. "A," I squeaked.
     Amber eyes studied me for a second before slowly lowering. And true to her word she was painstakingly careful. And gentle. And so very strange.

The early morning sky was as gray and bleak as the water. A bitingly chill wind blew in from the sea, driving flecks of snow and sharp little foam-crested waves up the river ahead of it. The river mouth yawned wide there, the marshy, ice-encrusted shores receding until they were distant lines far off to either side. Ice floes freckled the water, balancing between the current and the wind, rocking on the waves and crunching under the paddle wheels as the Pigeon drove into the estuary at the top of what I'd known as the Chesapeake Bay.
     That last leg of the journey was a graphic demonstration in why the Pigeon wasn't seaworthy. Even on the slight swell the vessel was rolling to a nauseating degree, the paddle wheels almost losing their contact with the water. We maintained headway, but that was how the ship handled in an estuary at the top of a huge bay, a long way from the open ocean. In any kind of decent chop that vessel would've been less than useless.
     Chihirae came on deck to look south over the concrete expanse of the bay. After a few minutes she shuddered, her ears flat, and then retreated below.
     We were staying well clear of open ocean as we chased the northern shoreline out into the estuary. That was the worst of the ride — cutting southeast across the huge bay toward a distant forested headland. That crossing was several hours of tense rolling and driving against the wind. Rounding the peninsula was even more fun: I could distinctly see waves breaking against shoals and a raggedly precipitous shoreline and sincerely hoped that the engines didn't choose that moment to break down.
     Contrary to all dramatic narratives they held together and did their jobs, and once we were around the headland we were in calmer waters. All the Rris looked more than a little relieved when the rolling damped down and the paddle wheels took on a steadier cadence. From there we headed north. On either side the bay was constricting again, narrowing down to become the mouth of another river. All along both shores I could see signs of habitation: farmland, fields for animals, hemp plantations, settlements and villages. The further north we drove the closer together those settlements grew. There was less wilderness, the buildings larger and more complex. There were breakwaters and wharves jutting out into the inlet. There was industry, with brick smokestacks pouring black smoke into the grey sky. Environmental concerns weren't high on anyone's list here.
     By the time the sun had sunk to a smeared glimmer on the western horizon we reached the end of the bay. Final touches of gold light gleamed from the tips of mastheads and sails, scores of them moored or scurrying in before the dusk was gone. Breakwaters had been built around the harbor — elaborate stone walls and towers with battlements and flags and cannon all glowing sunset red. Brighter light flashed from one of the towers, a rhythmic pulse of code. When I looked up at the bridge the captain was responding with a little pedestalmounted lamp.
     Not for the first time I thought that most of the Rris world seemed to be seriously underestimating the Bluebetter signaling system.
     As we approached the harbor mouth lights started appearing along the walls and on the shore beyond. More than the Rris would need, but still not as many as I'd expect in a capital city.
     "This is Red Leaves?" I asked. From the bow of the Pigeon I had a good view. The others also gathered there to watch our arrival. I was in my coat, buttoned against the wind but with fine formal wear beneath. Rraerch and Chaeitch were in subdued finery. The Mediators in their usual not-quite uniforms — I noticed Jenes'ahn wasn't using the sling any more, but she was being careful about the arm. Makepeace was in breeches and a shirt that looked too thin for the evening chill. Chihirae wasn't in the same league as the industrialists, but her kilt and tunic were elegant and well-made.
     "Not exactly," Hedia said. "The city and palace are a little further to the northeast. Not quite an hours ride."
     We passed between the two towers standing sentinel over the harbor mouth. There was no gate or chain, but the towers were imposing things and there were certainly guns up there. As well as a pair of beacons that flared to life as we passed between them.
     More lights speckled the evening. Glimmering lamps were springing up along the fortifications and docks and waterfront, reflecting from ice and dark water. A single berth in particular had been kept clear of other vessels and now was surrounded by lights, flags, and figures scurrying to and fro. Someone had been anticipating and preparing for our arrival.
     A trio of small steam tugs — little more than skiffs with paddlewheels and crude steam engines squatting amidships like copper bugs — puttered out to meet us. Their funnels pumped smoke and the wind sent bursts of sparks whirling high into the evening sky as they helped nudge the Pigeon in towards its berth where multitudes of lamps were now burning and more and more Rris were gathering. I could see guards lining up in a double line running down the dock. Some of those colors were Shattered Water.
     "You ready for this?" Chaeitch asked me.
     "This is going to be a circus, isn't it," I murmured back.
     "Most likely," he hissed back, doing a pretty good ventriloquist act. "You know the routine: Be calm. Be polite. And behave."
     We berthed in the lee of a stone pier. Sailors rushed around, throwing ropes to others on shore. The thump of the engines died down and finally stopped as the hull bumped the fenders along the dock. Our own guards were up on deck: Land-of-Water's to the front and Bluebetter's on the aft deck. They'd dragged out reserves of spit and polish and their commanders had made sure it was liberally applied. Now each were trying to ensure their cohorts out-gleamed the others. Gangplanks were run out.
     At least they didn't have brass bands.
     Hedia and Rraerch and Chaeitch led the way, the rest of us following close behind. When I stepped up to the top of the gangplank I was looking down on the wharf, on the double line of guards stretching back to the wharf. I could see the lamps flickering in the wind, flecks of snow swirling through the puddles of light, could see heads all along the dock suddenly turn to track me. Seeing a hundred pairs of eyeshine suddenly flash into being is an atavistically eerie sight. Frigid air burned as I took a deep breath, braced myself, and headed down into the crowd.
     The Rris waiting for us weren't lords or highest ranking officials — there's no way they'd be waiting out on a freezing dock for a ship to come in. But they were still important enough to push their way to the front of the gathering: officers and officials and some who might've been guild or merchant leaders. How had they known to show up? I was pretty sure no-one had texted them.
     Hedia led the way into the thick of them. As I followed there was the usual effect: a small but noticeable lean or even half-step backwards amongst the front rank, propagating like a ripple across a pond. She stalked into the crowd like a politician, greeting one here, inclining a head to another. Nothing effusive or undignified, just acknowledging the crowd and keeping them at a respectable distance.
     They watched me, whispered and hissed to one another. Some made moves to approach, to say something, but the Mediators formed up on either side of me and adopted rigid expressions that had the same sort of effect as an electric fence: Rris stared and shifted, but they kept their distance as Hedia worked through them. I also looked around, at the gleaming polished armor, the jewelry and the fine clothes. The weapons the guards were carrying were older flintlocks, but carved and embellished with ornamental silver and steel. They'd known we were coming long enough to get all this ready.
     "Mikah," Rraerch said, drawing my attention back. She introduced me to a few minor lords and landholders, the local mayor, the garrison commander, a couple of senior guild members, all of whose names went right by me. But it was obvious the affair wasn't intended to be a meet and greet, more of a trophy parade; names were thrown at me and we were hustled on down the line along with the swirling snowflakes before anything had a chance to be said. Along the wharf between the lines of guards, every tenth one holding aloft lamps on poles that awoke gleaming highlights from polished uniforms and weapons.
     Carriages were waiting for us at the end of the line. Big powder-blue elk-drawn things every bit as ornate and expensive as the ones from Shattered Water. There were Bluebetter marks on the doors, gold inlay on the traces, cut glass in the windows. The drivers and pair of guards up on the benches were hunched down into heavy cloaks, bundled up against the cold.
     Before we reached them there was a minor commotion as someone pushed through the surrounding guard, all the while making apologies as startled officers and armed soldiers were brushed aside. A tall Rris wearing a blue tunic decorated with the Land-of-Water pushed through, brandished a small metal token before the guards and paused to adjust his tunic. The trio of guards behind him were in land-of-water livery.
     "Hah, and that would be your ambassador," Hedia said.
     "Ah Fefthri," Rraerch pricked her ears up. "I'd hoped to meet you."
     "Respects," Fefthri ducked his head to us and straightened again. Tall Rris. Up to my chin. But skinny like a reed, with big hands and an almost sleepy look about him. He gave me a once over; a very contained and relaxed glance for someone who'd never met me before, then he turned back to Rraerch. "Honored to be able to greet you. Regrettably, there seems to have been a misunderstanding over times. The notice we requested appeared to be mislaid."
     Hedia looked grave. "Such things do happen."
     "Oh, quite," Fefthri smiled lazily. "Perfectly understandable. Remarkable that we made it in time at all. It was a good journey?"
     "An interesting journey," I said.
     "Ah," the Ambassador's ears pricked up. No shock that I could detect there, so he'd at least been briefed.
     "Details will be forthcoming," Hedia interjected quickly.
     "Of course," Fefthri nodded. "I just wished to extend the Embassy's welcome and support. If you require anything, we will do our utmost to oblige. We can house some of your staff and provide a guide or perhaps advisor."
     Rraerch blinked placidly. "Thank you, ah Fefthri. Appreciated. We have obligations this night at the palace, but there are matters to discuss. Expect a visit from myself at the embassy tomorrow."
     "We will do so, Ma'am. Journey well," he bade her, ducked his head and stepped back.
     I was shown to first carriage. It was the usual layout inside: two well-upholstered benches facing one another. As they weren't intended for long-distance haulage or to navigate narrow and winding rutted roads, there was a little more room than in the carriages we'd taken from Shattered Water. Six-seaters, rather than four. It was also noticeably warmer than the outside, so there was some form of heating even if it only just managed to take the edge off the chill. They'd obviously had some suggestions from Shattered Water.
     I made sure Chihirae got into the same coach and was sitting with me. Jenes'ahn insinuated herself, and Hedia, Chaeitch, and Rraerch squeezed in opposite. Makepeace and Rohinia were riding in the second coach, along with several of our own guards. "We will provide for your people and ensure your luggage is brought along," Hedia assured us.
     There wasn't even a jolt as we moved off. The vehicle was the Rris equivalent of a Bentley, of a Rolls; an elegant form bearing the passengers in opulence and comfort, the leaf suspension actually managing to absorb most of the rattling impact of metal wheels on cobblestones.
     The sun was gone. Heavy clouds were rolling in, blotting out the evening sky. Snow swirled by in fat, isolated flakes. Drydocked and upended boats passed by, then dockyard warehouses and offices and workshops and we were among small buildings and then passing through a market square. There were shops and stalls there, with lamps burning in windows and braziers outside cooking cuts of meat and pots of stew and broth. Rolls of flat bread were stacked up, poultry and cuts of meat hung like Christmas decorations. The square was full of Rris milling around, getting their dinner and a show as the procession of royal carriages and armed escorts clattered past.
     "It's not far," Hedia said and I realized she was addressing me. "Less than an hour along the Bay Road. His highness will greet you and there will be a light meal and you will have the opportunity to rest and clean up tonight. Tomorrow will be busy: his highness wishes some time with you alone, then there are meetings with Guild leaders, scholars and physicians. In the evening there will be an invitational for Guild leaders and local lords and diplomats. That will be... important."
     "Security?" Jenes'ahn asked.
     "The Mediator Guild has cleared all this and will have constables in attendance," Hedia said. "I can assure your complete safety."
     The carriage turned, a hard left that had us sliding across the benches and then we suddenly sped up. There were shouts from outside and Hedia had a chance to say, "What..."
     "Get down!" Jenes'ahn snapped and kicked the door open. It swung wide, then was slammed back as a wall suddenly scraped by outside. On both sides. In the space of several breaths we raced through a narrow tunnel the carriage barely squeezed through and just as we exited it there was an almighty metal crash behind us. Jenes'ahn pushed the door open again and stuck her head out. Gunshot. She screamed and ducked back, one of her ears shredded.
     I had my own revolver out. The guard on the box had been about... there. I fired at the ceiling. One, two, three rounds that punched through the wood, beyond deafening in the confines of the cab. My ears were full of a ringing noise, but by the movement of Rris mouths there was a lot of shouting going on. Chaeitch had caught Jenes'ahn, hauled her in. She shook her head sending damp droplets spraying. And then she went for the door again. I kicked the other door open, took a breath and swung out. There was a shape up there on the roof of the cab, aiming toward Jenes'ahn. I fired. Fire flashed from the muzzle and cylinder gap. The figure jerked and twisted wildly, a shotgun discharging into the winter sky as the Rris slipped and tumbled off the back of the carriage. I got both hands on the rails along the top of the carriage and swung my legs over, screaming a curse at the weight of my coat and the stab of pain in my leg. There was another firearm retort, a flash of smoke and fire and something slapped my shoulder, hard, cracking across armor which in turn thumped me like a pneumatic ram as I hauled around onto the rear luggage rack. I stopped cursing it.
     A freezing winter night on top of a rocking coach. The animals were going flat-out, and that was alarmingly fast on something that felt like it was being rattled to bits. But it wasn't just the speed that terrified me. By the coach lamps I could see we were thundering along a cobble boulevard between big old trees that turned the cloud-covered gloom into patches of darkness and utter blackness to my eyes. Behind us stood a tower gate in a curtain wall. Lamps were lit, a flag flying, and the portcullis was down. That'd been the noise when we went through. Someone had dropped it behind us. How long would it take the local guard to get around that and catch up? Too long. And it meant there was a good chance there'd be another sort of welcoming committee ahead.
     Another gunshot sounded, from inside the coach this time. I used the distraction to scramble up, up onto the roof, yelling my head off. The driver was thrashing the reins, trying to scoot over onto a corner of the bench and urge the animals faster. The guard was wielding a bulky pistol. I saw glimmering eyes above a bandit-style mask as the gun swung around, the hammer clicked, and it misfired. Mine didn't. His head flew back as if he'd been kicked in the teeth. With a horribly wet cry he fell over the side and the coach bumped wildly, almost hard enough to knock me off. The driver looked around at me and gaped jaws in a snarling scream.
     "Drive!" I screamed back and leveled the revolver at his face, baring teeth as I snarled, "Don't! Stop!"
     And sure enough there were Rris on the road ahead, running to intercept us and try and grab the reins. I fired my revolver at them, not sure of hitting anything with the jolting and the motion, which got worse as the animals all tried to pull away from the retorts. Then another figure was beside me, leveling a flintlock at the driver. I realized the gun in my hand was empty — I never left a full cylinder under the hammer while carrying.
     "Left!" Jenes'ahn snarled through blood and fury. "Next left. Take it."
     I looked back behind us. Our assailants were pursuing. Some on their own mounts, but the closer ones were on foot, sprinting across icy ground with a terrifying speed, cloaks flying behind them and masks covering their faces. Not much choice, I had to use my holdout. We slowed to take the corner and suddenly the closest were only a couple of meters behind us when I opened up again. Three rounds. One down. Another two shots and another staggered and then they fell back uncertainly. A whip cracked, our elk barked in protest and the coach managed to build some speed, rumbling along a narrow lane with stone walls on either side. One of the running lights hit the wall and shattered into glass and metal and a streak of burning lamp oil.
     I stuffed the holdout back into its holster and frantically reloaded the silver pistol, fumbling in the dark and freezing wind and finding I didn't have enough bullets on me. Six rounds in total. I hadn't expected a firefight.
     The riders were after us and drawing closer. Their elk were amazingly fleet-footed in the treacherous conditions, but the constricting road meant they had to bunch up.
     I fired again and again, not seeming to hit anything but the smoke and fire-filled retorts of black powder made them keep their distance. I could see eyes flashing in the darkness. Twice muskets gouted return flame and sparks, but if the shots came close I didn't notice them.
     Another corner. Another hard left that made the iron-bound wheels scream on cobbles, pounded a metal hub against the wall and knocked a tumble of stones and mortar loose as we turned back toward the town. Our pursuers tried to close in and I fired twice more, making an animal in the forefront stumble and wail and hinder the others enough for our beasts to build up speed again. Another wide boulevard, high hedges on either side concealing tastefully secluded houses. The broad street meant our pursuers could spread out again, and I didn't have any more ammunition. But there were lights going on in those houses...
     And behind us the pursuit suddenly slowed, then stalled. I saw them rein their animals in, then haul them about and vanish back into the drifting snow. The night was as quiet and as empty as if they'd never been there.
     Except for my thundering heart, shuddering breaths of freezing air that was turning the sweat to ice in my beard and hair, the stink of gunpowder and burnt fur. Our coach abruptly slowed and then stopped. I stood in time to see a cavalry charge of armed riders materialize from the darkness ahead. They swarmed around us in a mob of animals and armed and armored Rris that filled the avenue. I could at least recognize the Bluebetter uniform. I could see Rohinia bulling his way through the crowd, looking uncharacteristically furious. Voices were shouting conflicting orders and questions. Jenes'ahn had collapsed.
     "Mikah!" I looked down at the Rris clambering out of the battered, bullet-ridden, and scorched coach, gaping up at me standing on the damn roof with a smoking pistol in hand.
     "Sorry," I panted and looked at Hedia. "We were interrupted. Now, what were you saying before?"

Everyone was subdued for the rest of the journey into Red Leaves. The ride was hurried and not nearly as smooth as we hurried through what looked like another residential area. In the dark outside I could see thick hedges and high walls of stone or brick and the occasional gate, but that was it.
     Of course we were surrounded by highly alert mounted troops, all ready to shut the door after the elk had bolted.
     My coat wasn't looking nearly as new as it had a week ago. Bullet holes in the front, cut marks on the sleeves and the back and now the leather of the shoulder bore a deep gouge that exposed the broken ceramic plate and the steel beneath. I sighed and glumly poked a finger into a new hole right through the sleeve of my coat. At least one of those bullets hadn't been so far off the mark after all.
     I was beginning to think that coat had been a good investment.
     Chihirae was helping Rohinia tend Jenes'ahn who was semi-conscious and semi-furious on the other seat. A load of shot had clipped the Mediator's head — shredded her right ear and torn through fur and skin. A fraction of a whisker lower and it'd have perforated her thick skull as well. It was a wonder she hadn't lost an eye. Chihirae had some experience with buckshot injuries and was entirely sympathetic. She and Rohinia were staunching and cleaning up the worst of the blood that'd matted her fur.
     Hedia was... quieter. This had happened in her town and on her watch. And I'd just done something insanely stupid, killed several Rris, and — thinking back on it — risked my life. Things like that usually put a damper on conversation. Likely the Bluebetter government had been planning to use the attacks against us in Land-of-Water territory to try and convince me that my current hosts weren't capable of protecting me. Now any plan like that was out the window.
     Which raised some more interesting questions. Had Bluebetter staged those raids to scare me? Was some other player playing the same sort of game with them? It'd make sense in some ways.
     I was coming to loathe politics. By comparison, a classroom of screaming first-graders trying to share the last piece of cake was a tranquil model of harmony and cooperation. "I don't know if I should thank you or not," Chaeitch murmured, leaning toward me. "I probably shouldn't encourage you to do stupidly dangerous deeds like that. However, I think I owe you a drink."
     "Another drink," I corrected. "And you're welcome."
     "Why'd you do that, anyway? You could've been killed."
     "I think they weren't supposed to try and kill me."
     "Looks like they rotted well tried their best," he growled.
     I glanced over at Chihirae. He saw.
     "Huhn," he slumped back. "You're like a she-bear with her cubs. Did you notice anything about them?"
     "Well, I think they might have had guns."
     A snort. "You know full well what I mean."
     "It was dark. You know I could hardly see anything. Most of the time I was just shooting at movement and other gunfire." I shrugged, "I really don't think I'd know one if they walked up and shook my hand."
     "Rot," he sighed. "Maybe our hosts will uncover something. Anything that might've made you think they were our friends from the road?"
     "No," I shook my head, but had another thought. "Ah, wait: these guys were wearing masks. Hiding their faces. The ones from the valley didn't."
     "Huhn."
     "That means something to you?"
     "That they are probably local and afraid of being recognized? Aside from that, I don't know," he waved a shrug. "I think that's for the Mediators to deal with."
     I looked over at where Jenes'ahn was hunched over. In the ghostly moon-glow seeping through the window I could see she was shuddering, her face distorted in snarling grimaces as Chihirae tended to her head. "I think they'll have their hands full."
     Hedia had been correct: the trip was a short one. Eventful, but short. Another half hour through dark streets and boulevards and then there was light ahead. A gatehouse of pale stone, lit like a beacon by a festoon of lamps. We passed underneath, past murals and wideopen ornate iron gates. Then the wheels were crunching on the gravel of a long, straight drive. Much like the palace in Shattered Water it was lined by huge trees, their winter-bare boughs spread out over the lane. Oil lamps on poles like tiki torches lined the drive. A lot of them — the drive went on for some distance through a show-bound estate.
     Like the other royal estates I'd seen on my travels this one was big. A lot of wilderness with the palace nestled in the center. With the windows set in the side of the coach I couldn't see straight ahead, so the first look I got of the palace in Red Leaves was when we swung into the loop at the end of the drive and the foggy, iced-up glass in the coach window glowed with the light spilling from the edifice.
     It was big. That wasn't a surprise, I'd been expecting something grandiose. But the architecture was interesting... it was subtly different from the other palaces I'd seen. Sure, it was big, as the others had been — designed as a political statement and point of pride as much as an architectural achievement, but it'd grown with a different design ethos than Landof-Water or Cover-my-Tail. Similar to the subtle differences between 16th century French and German architecture.
     The drive looped before a gabled front of pale stone. Sweeping steps rose up a full story to big double doors paneled in planished copper, decorated with geometric details inlaid in some sort of glossy black stone. In the gable above the doors were two-story windows, backlit from inside to reveal they were stained glass — a gleaming mosaic of colors and patterns spreading from the lower center pane: branches and trees, or perhaps rivers, or roads. Stylized figures of larger than life Rris in old armor standing guard around the fringes. Above the windows a steep, high-peaked roof swept down in a gentle flared curve that covered the entrance wing. That wing led back to the main façade of the palace which stretched away for a hundred meters to either side.
     First overall impressions of the Palace was it was a stylistically romantic interpretation of a fortress. Not gothic, not classical or neo-classical, not any particular style I could name. Of course not — it wasn't following any human architectural flavors.
     There were superficial similarities to the fortifications I'd seen elsewhere, but only in the general lines, buried beneath layers of embellishment, detailing, and decoration. The base was a featureless, nearly-sheer incline of pale granite a whole story tall. Atop that were widely-spaced three-story high columns, slender only when seen in context with the rest of the building: they were each the size of a redwood. Between those, on each floor, were arched balconies, all with intricately wrought railings made from what looked like verdigristarnished copper, a fortune of the stuff. And lights burned in all the rooms along there, shining through the glass panes in French doors. For the Rris it wasn't simply a matter of flipping on switches in each of the room. They had to light expensive candles or oil lamps in each of those hundreds of rooms. A small army of servants was probably chasing their tails keeping lamps filled and candles replenished. It wasn't just a show or a fire risk, it was another statement.
     Although, at that time it wasn't saying exactly what they'd intended.
     Their grand welcome was a shambles. Instead of being greeted in a controlled, stately, and impressive reception, we were hurried from bullet-pocked coaches with undignified haste. Palace guards in dress uniform were probably supposed to be standing at attention. Instead they and their gleaming armor and ceremonial weapons were part of the escort ushering us to the doors. They tried to hurry us, but Jenes'ahn wasn't in any condition to rush. I deliberately kept to a pace she could manage, forcing the guards to slow down. Hell, she'd stuck her neck out for us. Literally.
     So, we took the steps at a civilized pace. I had to notice that while the stone of the building's façade was crisp, sharply cut, those steps weren't. They were huge pieces of organic stone, joined almost seamlessly. And up the center of the staircase was a shallow trough, a groove worn in the stone where feet had passed. How many?
     The doors were imposing — it seemed to be a trend for Rris government buildings. Part of that isolation mindset? To allow another through your doors was a Moment. It should be commemorated. These double doors certainly did that. They were tall things, massive things, slung from hinges the size of my head. The hammered copper finishing reflected a deep bronze glow that almost rippled in the torchlight while the geometric curlicues of black stone seemed to drink it.
     At the top of the steps three Rris came forward to meet us. They were dressed in the same fashion as Rohinia and Jenes'ahn, carried themselves with the same bearing.
     "The Guild insisted on meeting you here," Hedia explained.
     "You're sure they're Guild?" I asked.
     "Mikah!" Rraerch cautioned me. I shrugged. Rohinia met with them and they exchanged quiet words, the other three glancing over his shoulder at me. Hedia took us inside.
     During the day the hall would've been big and impressive. At night it was big and impressive and shadowy, despite the huge chandeliers and all the lamps burning. Arched arcades flanked the central aisle, a balcony above them. Bas relief carvings and inlaid patterns of gilt glinted in the white plaster walls. Under the touch of flickering lamplight gold leaf and detailing glowed and danced with a life electrics couldn't bestow. Intricate detailing reminiscent of the front door were visible in the stone of the floor, where it wasn't worn smooth or even indented by shaggy Rris feet. Not inlaid or paved or artificially polished, but worn smooth from age and passing. Contrasting the wealth of the upper reaches with a declaration of solidity and permanence.
     Hedia ushered us through there, into a confluence of corridors beneath a great arched dome three floors above. The inside of the dome was painted with murals and gold leaf, but in the twilight I couldn't quite make out the details. Old and tattered flags hung in prominent positions high around the periphery of the chamber.
     There were Rris there to take Jenes'ahn. Royal physicians, Hedia said they were. Jenes'ahn shrugged off their offers of assistance and limped away under her own power, only wobbling slightly. Rohinia watched her go but stayed with us.
     Hedia took us in the opposite direction — right. Then left. Then down more long hallways of wood and marble. The floors were newer: tiled or polished wood and carpets. One entire wall of a hall was lined with windows looking out onto a central atrium and garden, much like the one in the palace in Shattered Water. The other side of the hall was paneled in old mirrors of polished brass. The surfaces weren't quite flat so the reflections were distorted, like funhouse mirrors. Cloudy mockeries of ourselves paced us, exhaling wreaths of pale breath as we did.
     We were headed toward the back of the Palace, the wing furthest from the front door. Hedia took us up a great staircase of pale marble to what I thought was the top floor. There was a landing there with guards on duty, then another short hall that terminated in double doors with more guards outside. They watched intently as we approached and I could see them staring at me.
     "We've doubled the guard around your suites, "Hedia told us as she passed them and pushed through the doors. "No one approaches without permission."
     "Your staff quarters are through there," Hedia said, pointing at the left-hand door. "There's accommodation for your staff and guards. There are kitchens and your own stocks of food and water, as requested. Your officers can talk with our commander: arrange watches and guard duties and patrols. There are the usual posts and courtesies. Your own accommodation is through here; I hope they are satisfactory." She opened the other door. "We welcome our guest as host and extend all courtesy and all that entails."
     There was a long corridor of cream stone and alabaster white plaster. A sky-blue rug shot with silver thread ran its length. Windows were set along one wall. At intervals along the other were wider alcoves where the corridor broadened. In each of those alcoves was a door, each of a different wood.
     There were multiple suites. Hedia pointed them out. One for Rraerch, one for Chaeitch, one for Chihirae, and one for me. Mine was the third in line, and it was...
     My quarters were... expansive. Expensive. And opulent. And probably quite a few other adjectives. Our hosts were trying to impress, and I tried to bear that in mind and remember these rooms were extravagantly appointed by local standard. Price-wise they'd be in line with a penthouse suite in the Burj Al Arab.
     It was the same layout as the guest quarters I'd been given in Open Fields. Very similar to my guest rooms back in Shattered Water, only larger. The antechamber was a buffer between the host's world and the visitor suite. It was a long, austere room. Plain, but not cheap by any means. White plaster walls, white-painted wooden wainscoting. A wooden floor that looked old: worn and gouged, but still polished. There was skylight, a single table with a bowl and a vase with some river reeds. Two other doors of wood and padded with buttoned red leather.
     Hedia introduced me to the suite staff, standing in a line in the foyer and staring fixedly at the wall as I passed. It was like a military parade. They were flawlessly poised and groomed and my appearance didn't seem to register at all — I didn't even see a tail twitch. There were maids and chambermaids and valets under a steward who were all vouched for and would be available to assist my own staff.
     The quarters themselves were brightly lit with more lamps than a Rris would require — expensive lamps burning clean oil. There was a faint underlying scent of new constructions: smells of fresh paint and sawdust buried under pine and the ever-present musk of Rris dwellings. The walls were light green satin paper embossed with gold sigils above white lacquered wainscoting. Ceilings were high, decorated with bass relief patterns painted orange and gold, abstract organic radial designs that could have been flowers or trees or something entirely different — similar to those on the glass windows out front. Powder blue drapes were drawn. The floors were fine parquetry in several tones of dark wood, the majority covered in big, expensive rugs of lighter creams, blues and salmons. As with any Rris residence there were public areas for receiving guests as well as more secluded private areas, away from outsiders. In my suite there was the foyer and off that an open drawing room and a lounge for guests. Further back, behind more doors, there was a private study and library and another small private lounge. The bedroom was the size of a small church with an oversized bed covered in eiderdowns, a giant wardrobe and dressers and clothing chests in white lacquer, and a full-length mirror of what looked like Open Fields glass. The ensuite was of white marble with light blue paneling and gold trim — minimalist enough to be mistaken for a designer bathroom back home, if you overlooked the oil lamps. And someone had done their research — there was a shower. Of sorts.
     "And if you require anything, anything at all, simply pull on one of those cords," she indicated a bright yellow braided cord hanging by a door. "There will always be someone to attend.
     "Now your luggage will be delivered to your staff to unpack for you," Hedia said as she walked me back to the foyer. "Her Ladyship's suite is next door, through there," she gestured to a door padded in red leather. "The key is in that bowl. It is the only one."
     "It's warm in here," I noted and gestured to the fireplace in the lounge. "But that's the only fire."
     "Yes, sir," she looked pleased. "That is mostly for decoration. Hot air from a furnace is sent under the floor. It can heat all these rooms better than stoves or fireplaces. It also heats water for the wing."
     "Hypocaust?" I ventured, not that they could answer that. "I know this thing. It seems to work well. You don't use the smoke from the flue, do you?"
     She looked a bit taken aback. "Sir, I'm afraid my knowledge of that is not extensive. I will make enquiries."
     Didn't really matter, apart from the potential monoxide poisoning, that is. But I still said, "Thank you. One other question: where is Makepeace staying?"
     She looked puzzled momentarily, then blinked. "The girl, sir? The Shattered Water University representative?"
     "That one. A."
     "Staff quarters, I believe," she said as we reached the foyer. Rraerch and Chaeitch were waiting there. "Is that a problem, sir?"
     "Get her a proper room, please," I said. "Consider her... a guest of mine."
     She considered that, glanced at the others who obviously didn't know what was going on and looked a little worried. "Very good, sir," she said. "I will arrange it."
     "Thank you," I said.
     "Everything to your liking?" Rraerch asked me.
     "Yes, it's very nice," I smiled.
     "Excellent," she said and handed a folded note to Hedia: a hinged piece of ivory closed with a wax seal. "This was delivered to the door. For your eyes."
     "Thank you, Maa'm," Hedia said as she popped the seal and folded the note open to read the scratching on the wax pad inside. "Ah," she said, clicked the note closed again. Looked embarrassed. Looked at me. "His highness wishes to meet with you tonight." "Just him?" Rraerch asked.
     "It would seem so. I am aware it is late and you are... tired, but he does make the request."
     "An offer we can't refuses, a?" I asked Rraerch.
     "You are welcome to decline," Hedia said.
     "But it would be... impolitic," Chaeitch offered.
     "Quite," Rraerch said.
     I sighed. I was tired and sore and exhausted. I had powder burns on my hand and had pulled something in my shoulder. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into something soft and sleep for a week. But... I nodded. "Fine. You sort out Makepeace, and I'll meet his Lordship. He will have to forgive..." I gestured at my scuffed, muddied and gunpowderreeking and stained self. "This."
     "Quite understandable," Hedia said.
     "The Mediators and guards will need to know," Rraerch said.
     "Hey," I said. "We're in the middle of the palace. What could possibly happen? Don't answer that."

It hadn't been far — just a couple of halls away from the guest wing. I was tired, riding the crash from an adrenaline high, aching, but I had to acknowledge the request.
     Guards with halberds were waiting outside a set of double doors. The weapons might have been ceremonial, but I still saw their hands flexing on the hafts as we passed. It was another foyer into another suite, a very fancy one: a pair of tapestries hanging on opposite walls looked like they'd been woven from fine strands of metal, each depicting scenes of city and rural life intricately rendered from threads of gold and silver and copper and iron and steel and platinum and nickel. There was a vase made from some kind of lumpy green glass that fractured lamplight into glittering turquoise threads. In a small niche stood a piece of carving that I recognized as a scent-carving, but this wood was smooth gray, worn almost shapeless like driftwood, old.
     The elderly Rris in dignified servant's garb greeted us with a bow. Rraerch gave me a pat on the arm before she and the guards stepped back to wait while the steward led me further into the suite, through more doors.
     It was a long, dimly lit room. Bookcases marched off into the gloom. Most of the light came from a fireplace: big, mantled in more bronze. The fire burning there had died down to a broad bed of embers — red as a guttering lamp, hot as a desert wind. The dull glow didn't reach the corners of the room, but was just enough to light the two large, square cushions and small table in front of the hearth. They'd gone out of their way to light the rest of my quarters, then they did this. Probably at the decision of the Rris standing waiting for me.
     "Ah Ri'hey," Chita ah Thes'ita greeted me. He didn't step forward or smile or offer to shake hands, nothing that a human might've done. I also kept my motions to a minimum, just offering a careful bow. There weren't any guards in that room, but there was a closed door with a crack of light showing under it: shadows moved against the light. They weren't far off.
     The king of Bluebetter was a big Rris. Not young anymore, with more salt than pepper in the fur, but he was still an imposing figure and carried himself with a solid bearing that said he was used to being in charge. Perhaps a glimpse of what Hirht might be like in a few decades. His clothing was light, subdued, but not cheap: a high-collared cream tunic and a dark green kilt. He still had those rings in his ears and a silver gorget gleamed like blood in the firelight.
     "Sir," I said. "Thank you for the invitation."
     His ears flicked, just momentarily and then he inclined his head. "Your speaking has improved."
     "Thank you, sir."
     "Not that we had much of an opportunity to talk last time," he said and gestured at a cushion. "Please, sit. I want to assure you there won't be a repeat of our last meeting." I didn't smile. Last time we'd met his guards had interpreted a smile of mine as a threatening gesture and promptly flattened me. Laughs all around that time. So I just sat myself on the cushion he indicated. He settled himself on the other, cross-legged, rigidbacked and dignified, the little coffee table between us. He studied me for a few seconds; my smoke-smudged appearance, scars on my coat, windblown hair. I looked like I'd just been for a brisk stroll on a battlefield.
     "You had quite an arrival in Red Leaves, I hear."
     "Yes, sir. We weren't expecting such an... active reception."
     "Huhnnn," he rumbled, not quite a growl. "I will say I was disappointed. Assurances were made that something like that could not happen. I have spoken with guard commanders to make sure there will be no repeats."
     No apologies. No 'sorry about that'. He wasn't willing to admit they were responsible.
     "I also heard you had similar trouble on the road."
     "Similar, a," I said.
     "That was over the border, wasn't it? In Land-of-Water."
     Was he trying to shift blame already? "A," I said.
     "Huhn," he growled again. "A different group then?"
     "I'm not sure, sir. They would have to have beaten us here, and the Pigeon did make excellent time, so it doesn't seem likely. It's just their tactics seem remarkably similar."
     He tipped his head slightly.
     "So, is there any indication just who they were?" I asked.
     White teeth glinted for a few moments before he answered. "Unfortunately, no. The live one we found died of her injuries. Some of my advisors have said mercenaries are likely."
     "The driver?"
     "Claimed he didn't know anything was wrong until one of the intruders put a pistol in his ear and told him what to do. We have reason to believe that, but he is no longer... trusted."
     I just nodded.
     The Rris king was watching me. "Hedia said you were... frightening. Those were her words, and not ones she would use lightly."
     "It's not the first time it's happened, sir."
     The pupils dilated a fraction more. "She said you immediately fought back."
     "There wasn't much else we could do, sir."
     "And when you had the chance you didn't try to stop the carriage?"
     "They were waiting for us, sir. The best thing to do in the case of an ambush is to not get stuck in it."
     "You've had experience?"
     "No, sir. It's just one of those pieces of information you pick up that's quite useless most of the time. Except when it's not. I have a great deal of that."
     "And you are armed."
     I didn't grin back. "A, sir. Unfortunately I have found it necessary."
     "A repeater, I hear."
     "A."
     His muzzle dipped. "Those have caused a great deal of upset in this land, you know that." I sighed, winced as bruises protested. "I do. It was... I should not have allowed that information to be taken. I was careless in that regard. The Guild has been quite explicit in telling me this is something I can't discuss with you."
     There was a moment of silence in which the glowing embers popped and hissed, then he growled, "Soft-trodden spoken indeed. Yes, we've spoke with the Guild also. They've made their wishes quite clear."
     "A. They're good at that."
     He grunted, and then leaned over to the coffee table. The top swung aside to reveal a cubby with an ice bucket. He removed a pair of small white porcelain bowls, each about half the size of a teacup, and a single bottle, deep red in the light. He broke a wax seal and unstopped it and glass chimed against porcelain as he poured. "So, we can't discuss business matters tonight. I did give the Guild my word on that. But we can have a civilized talk about your time here. Please," he nodded to the bowls as he carefully resealed the bottle. "I was told you can appreciate a drink."
     I sipped. It was red and liquid. Silly me for thinking it was wine. It was stinging-cold. There was high-proof alcohol, also spice and a flavor like pepper and copper. It hit my sinuses like a firepot and my reflexive gasp didn't help.
     "That is all right?" ah Thes'ita enquired, holding his own bowl.
     "It's..." I blinked tears away. "It's... What is this? Like Haisa?"
     His muzzle pursed a bit, perhaps amusement, although he didn't seem the type. "Similar. Distilled from potatoes," he said. "Not so diluted, however, and fortified with snake blood and chili."
     "It's... strong."
     "A," he lapped. "And good for nights like this. Calms the nerves."
     Stuns them into submission might've been more accurate. But I sipped again. If you were ready for it, and after your mouth and part of your nervous system was numbed, it wasn't too bad.
     "Your accommodation is to your liking?"
     "Yes, sir."
     "I understand Shattered Water's University's choice of representative is a little unexpected."
     "For her too," I said.
     "Why is she here?" I tried another sip and hissed a breath, winced. "She's... she's here because she's good at what she does." It wasn't exactly a lie.
     He blinked. "Really? That's why you requested better rooms for her?"
     "A," I said calmly, sipped again. "She's with our group. I would expect her to be treated as such."
     "Huhn," he rumbled, his muzzle wrinkled. "Well, time will tell. And your teacher: everything is fine for her?"
     "She's frightened," I told him, looking down at the liquid swirling in the bowl. "I believe she has reason to be."
     "We have doubled the guard around your quarters."
     I nodded. That just meant there were twice as many armed bodies bumbling around. And they didn't seem to have restricted areas, or procedures, properly trained security, or photo ID, or biometrics, or fast communication... I had a feeling that a big concert back home might've had more effective security. Nevertheless... "Thank you, sir," I said. "That is appreciated."
     Amber eyes blinked. Firelight shimmered in their depths. "But you think they will try again."
     "A, sir," I nodded again, a gesture he probably didn't understand. "They've been... like the fucking Keystone Cops."
     A Rris frown. "That makes no sense."
     "I mean they've been... persistent and yet ineffective. Strangely so. They probably could've killed me several times over, but instead they..." I flailed for words, then waved a shrug. "The Mediators or our guard commanders could probably explain better than I can."
     "Huhn," he sipped thoughtfully. "And your Mediator, how is she?"
     "Not my Mediator," I said reflexively. "Sir. No, she's hurt. She'll recover."
     "Lose an ear, not an eye," he said philosophically. "Nevertheless, the Guild's not going to be pleased. Openly challenging their declarations and even assaulting constables. Disturbing." He sipped.
     I blinked. "I'm sure they're very concerned."
     "Hmmm?" He flicked an ear and snorted. "Ah Ri'hey, tomorrow evening I am hosting a gathering. Some of the most powerful and influential people in Bluebetter will be attending, simply to see you. That someone is openly ignoring a Guild declaration means they might see something like this as an opportunity."
     "Oh." A Rris party. A ball. I really didn't like those. Most of the one's I'd attended had been simply for the purpose of showing me off. "Wouldn't be the first time."
     "You are referring to Open Fields."
     "You know about that?"
     "Not many don't. Breathing fire and bending candlesticks over peoples' heads? That sort of story wanders."
     Unfortunately they did. That incident had been over in Cover-my-Tail, an attempt on my life at an event held by the queen. I'd been... lucky, again. "You think they're connected?"
     "Not an unreasonable assumption," he said. "Such events would be a good opportunity to get close to you. Since they've been willing to try and strike past the Guild's protections, there's every chance they might try and use this opportunity."
     Oh, even betterer. "So, perhaps it might be a good idea to delay this gathering?" I suggested hopefully.
     His muzzle twitched. "Impossible. A good number of influential people have travelled great distances to attend. To cancel or delay would cause problems. No, it will proceed.
     "There will be guards. You will have an escort who will ensure nobody uninvited or unexpected approaches you. Attending guests who meet with you will have received instructions about you and how to behave. The food will be tested and approved by your own staff. However, I would advise you to be alert.
     "The following days will be busy for you. There are an impossible number of people requesting or demanding meetings with you. There's no way to accommodate all their wishes, but we will try to give audience time to as many as practical. These will be business sessions with Guild representatives sitting in. I understand you've been given a list of proscribed subjects?"
     I almost laughed. "Oh, yes." After all we'd been through, that had survived intact.
     "Hmmm, we've received something similar. I understand it is quite substantial. Hedia will ensure that the Guild's rules are adhered to, under both my and the Guild's authority. These meetings will be conducted here in the Palace when possible. When not, if you are required to visit an industrial site, for example, we will do our utmost to ensure your safety. There won't be a repeat of tonight's act.
     "You should also know there have been requests for you to attend evening engagements outside the Palace. There're invitations from lords, guild leaders, some industry leaders, and merchants. Accommodating all those requests is, of course, not possible, so select ones will be chosen, which should tie in with the next subject."
     He paused, lapped delicately at his drink before continuing. "It was also mentioned that you might be interested in some of Red Leaves' other points of interests: galleries, menageries, stages, art collections. This is true?"
     I blinked and sat up a little straighter. "I would be very interested."
     "Then we might be able to match needs. Some of those petitioning own considerable private collections in very elegant parts of the city. I'm sure they would be only too enthusiastic to host you. Would this be acceptable?"
     "Thank you, sir," I said. "That would make the education a lot more two-sided."
     "Of course a lot of that will depend upon the Guild's answer."
     I sighed. "A. It always seems to."

Staff had been busy while we'd been gone: luggage had been brought in and unpacked; clothes had been put away; drink and food laid out. Our people were quietly busy, finding out where the locals kept everything.
     I sat with Rraerch, Chaeitch and Rohinia in the lounge, settled on cushions around a small stone table. The fire was still crackling. The lamps had been turned down, the soft light emphasizing the different textures on the satin wallpaper and exaggerating the shadows in bass relief carvings. There was other furniture: cabinets and display cases. One of the cabinets was a bar, with an assortment of wines, brandies, whiskeys, and even bottled water. And one of the display cases was just empty shelves, which struck me as a bit odd. There were paintings: a couple of Rris personages and a huge landscape hung over the fireplace. At first glance it resembled a Turner, until you took a close look at the laborers in the fields.
     "He said it went well," Rraerch was telling Rohinia.
     The Mediator looked at me. I shrugged. "He kept it simple," I said. "He asked about what'd happened and said they'd increase the guard. Then we discussed what was to happen over the next few days: Meetings at the Palace tomorrow and a gathering in the evening. Later would be visits to industrial sites, Guild houses, all the usual."
     "A," Rohinia said. "We've received an itinerary. We'll have to talk with the local Guild to see how practical it's going to be. They know the people and the land. Expect changes."
     "I wouldn't expect anything else," I sighed. "Now, are we done? I need a wash and that bed is looking very attractive."
     The Mediator looked at the others who just flagged agreement. "Looks like we are," he said as the other climbed to their feet. I walked them to the door. Rohinia just stalked away towards their quarters. I watched him go and asked Rraerch, "How's she doing?"
     "I didn't know you cared," she snorted. "She's... sore and angry."
     "Ah. An improvement."
     She gave me one of those looks.
     "You might want to be careful," Chaeitch said. "She's... more so than usual. Shredded an ear. I know how that stings." He touched his own perforated ear, a broad, red and sorelooking v-shaped notch quite prominent in the tufted appendage.
     "Ah," I said again. "Don't worry — I'll let her know she'll always be beautiful to me."
     They both snorted simultaneously. "Good night, Mikah," Rraerch sighed and they left.
     The suite was quiet. Dimly lit. It was the same feeling I used to get walking into a hotel room — you didn't live there, it was just a suit you were wearing for a while.
     I turned and headed back to the bedroom. As I passed that red-leather door in the foyer I paused, looked at the table with the bowl on it, looked at the key in the bowl. It was ten centimeters of shiny-new, heavy, solid steel, with weird Rris-designed teeth. It fit easily in the lock, turned easily. On the other side was a small antechamber or hallway with another, similar door at the far end. I checked that there was a keyhole on this side of the door, then slid the key under the other door. Closed the one at my end.
     "Sir?" the suite steward was standing in the antechamber, looking a little concerned. "Is everything all right, sir?"
     "Fine," I said and hesitated, "What's your name again?"
     "Yeircaez, sir."
     "Yeircaez, it's her ladyship's choice. Otherwise, she has her privacy, a?"
     "Yes, sir," he said. "Absolutely, sir."
     He probably had no clue why I'd done that, but it made me feel a little better.
     The shower was... interesting. It looked like it'd been built by someone who'd had the general concept of a small room with falling water in it explained to them, but never actually seen one. The result was a cubicle a couple of meters across: the floor a granite slab with a drain and beaten copper walls on three sides throwing back lamplight and murky funhousemirror reflections. There was a small tray holding an assortment of Rris grooming paraphernalia: heavy combs and small rakes and spiked implements. Overhead, the roof was another slab of stone, perforated by hundreds of tiny holes. Turn the tap and... it was like rain inside. Which is how my shower had been described to me. Once. Some years ago.
     But it worked. Steaming hot water fell with enough force to feel. I turned my face up to the stream and just stood there, sluicing away sweat, grime, gunpowder and blood — the wound on my leg throbbed where the stitches had torn and a new scab was dribbling red. But not seriously. For the first time in a long while there were no voices, no talking or shouting or arguing or demands, only the sound of water reverberating from those copper walls. The heat was more than welcome, easing the aches and knots in my shoulder where scar tissue meant I wasn't as flexible as I'd once been. For a while I could close my eyes and not think. Not think about everything that had happened, about what was to happen, about what might happen...
     Until my stomach reminded me that something that hadn't happened was dinner. I shut off the shower and stepped out to find my pile of dirty and stained clothes was gone. Waiting on a stand were a stack of snow-white towels and a bathrobe. I eyed that suspiciously. Of course it was a perfect fit.
     The apartment was quiet, that deep silence you get in museums or libraries: there're people around, you just can't hear them. I wandered through the empty bedroom, through the empty lounge. I weighed one of the pull cords in my hand before giving it a tug. I didn't hear anything and wondered if it was working.
     "Sir?" a member of the staff had materialized in the hall. It wasn't Yeircaez. Someone younger, faultlessly groomed and polite. "You rang?"
     "Yes. Uhn, is there any chance of getting something to eat?"
     "Yes, sir. Your kitchen and cook are ready. Is there anything in particular you'd like?"
     "Then cold cuts in sliced bread would be fine. He knows how to prepare them. Oh, and some wine, if possible. They know what I like."
     "That is all, sir?"
     "Yes, thank you."
     "Very good, sir," the attendant said and bowed before retreating back toward the foyer.
     I looked at the pull cord, then around the lounge. The fire was crackling. There was a lot of fiddly bass relief on the ceiling, more on the walls in the form of columns between swathes of the velvet wallpaper. I headed on through to the study. It was a smaller room, paneled in darker wood. Heavy drapes were closed, lamps lit. I nudged a curtain aside: uneven glass with snow drifting from the blackness beyond. Elsewhere in the room were sideboards, cabinets, a lot of shelves with books on them behind wavy glass doors. There was a map of the known world. A desk. The lockable trunk with my laptop and other gear. I opened that up and sorted through. Everything seemed to have come through in one piece, despite the dings and bumps on the outside of the trunk. I took the laptop case out and set it on the desk.
     "You dropped something," someone said. Chihirae stood at the door, leaning on the frame as she watched me, an over-sized key dangling from a clawtip. She was just wearing a simple little kilt, her winter fur fluffed out in the warmth. "Everything all right?"
     "A. Seems to be. Oh... I thought you should have that."
     "Your rooms," she said.
     "These are," I said. "Those are yours. And your decision."
     "Huhn," she caught the key in her fist and entered, looking around. "These are nice. Very nice."
     "Yours are okay? I can always..."
     "No," she said hastily. "They are... extravagant. There's a staff. I even have a groomer."
     "Better than me?"
     "I... They..." She looked flustered. Her tail lashed. "Rot, Mikah, I'm a teacher. I don't deserve this! I can't repay this!"
     "You'll never have to," I said and she stared back at me, her features momentarily frozen as she tried to read me as I tried to read her. Then she huffed an exhalation and sagged. So did I. "How's our fearless mediator?" I asked, shunting the conversation onto a less precipitous track.
     "Huhn," Chihirae picked up a little stone carving from a sideboard and turned it over as she examined it. "She's sore and angry. But lucky: they missed her eyes. What about you? They hit you, didn't they?"
     "I'm fine," I said. "And I'm annoyed and angry. That was... they should never have been able to get that close. Someone really screwed up."
     "As opposed to down?"
     "What? I... oh, you know what I mean."
     "A," she said. The stone figurine clicked when she put it back. "You killed someone?"
     She didn't look at me as she said it.
     "I don't know. I'm... pretty certain I did." I almost added, but they were all bad, but thought better of it.
     "And there's no idea who is responsible?"
     "Unless the Guild knows something they aren't telling us." Which is quite possible. I didn't say that either. "His highness has promised extra guards. I might talk with Rohinia: there are some precautions that can be taken that he might not know about."
     "Will they help?"
     "I... really don't know," I confessed. "I suppose the safest thing to do would be to stay here."
     "But that's not possible, is it."
     "Doesn't look like it. His highness said there will be a formal gathering tomorrow. Lords and ladyships coming to the Palace to... I suppose he wants to show me off. Then there will be trips to industries, guilds and workshops... all that fun stuff."
     She stared. "After all that happened they're just... going ahead?"
     "His highness said they have to. Apparently he has a great deal invested in this."
     "And if you die?"
     I grimaced, shrugged. "I hope I don't have to find out. But I think he would be in serious trouble, especially if he was found to be lax in his responsibilities. However, if he doesn't meet his obligations to his supporters... I suspect he'd be in a different kind of trouble."
     "It does sound more sensible to have them come to you."
     "A, but I don't think they can move the factories and machines they want me to look at so easily. Oh, and he did also mention some gatherings at other estates."
     Her ears went back. "Gatherings? You mean he wants you to attend functions in other places?"
     "I believe that's the idea."
     "Surrounded by strangers they've invited?"
     "Ummm, yes?"
     "And this is a good idea how?"
     Hmm, some of my idioms had rubbed off. "Apparently these promises were made some time ago, before these attacks."
     "But, surely he can certainly change his mind!"
     "I don't know," I said. "Politics does strange things."
     She didn't look convinced. "You should be more concerned."
     "A. I should," I said and then was interrupted by a tinny little noise. A tune. From inside the steamer trunk.
     Chihirae's muzzle wrinkled. "What is that?"
     "Oh." I opened the chest. The noise resolved. My phone was playing a familiar, very old tune. I picked it up, saw the time and date and shook my head as I swiped it quiet. I'd utterly lost track. "I'd almost forgotten," I said.
     "What?"
     I rummaged. There was another package down near the bottom. The brightly colored green and gold paper had been expensive to have printed, difficult to keep low-key. It was a little scuffed and torn on a corner. I held it out to Chihirae. "This is for you. Merry Christmas."
     Again confusion. "What?"
     "It's a... tradition. Something normally done at this time of year?" I swallowed, trying to block nostalgic flashes of times long gone. "It's something... this is the first time I've had time to think about it here. We would celebrate with gifts."
     "That was important?"
     "That was supposed to be a small part of it. It was more about... being with people you care for. A way of showing that. Sometimes wars stopped for that day."
     She looked at the package, then at me, cocked her head and then carefully took it from me. There was a card I'd spent some time making. There was a smudged picture of an elk on the front. "Why is its nose red?"
     I shrugged. "Long story. Not important."
     She read the inside of the card. Chittered abruptly and looked at me with slitted eyes. "More lessons are needed, I think."
     That stung. Was what I said in there misspelled or wrong? Or was it just incomprehensible?
     She was careful with the ribbon, and the paper — not tearing it, folding it carefully. The box inside was wooden, about the size of a large hardback book and considerably deeper. She looked at me again and then opened it. Stared.
     "Yours," I said into the silence. "I hope they fit. I think the sizes were right but..."
     "Mikah... this..." She set the box down on the desk. Picked up the choker with both hands to hold it up to the light. Solid gold had its own luster. Inlaid fire opals glowed like her eyes.
     "There will be gatherings," I said. "Receptions and balls and such. I noticed quite a lot of the nobility like to show off. They like shiny things. I suppose that says quite a lot about them, a?"
     She didn't smile. "Mikah, this... these must've cost a fortune!"
     "Apparently I've got a fortune," I said. "Several. I thought those would be better for you."
     "You want me to use them for the gathering?"
     "No," I corrected gently. "I want you to use them for whatever you want."
     Chihirae put the choker back into the case. The necklace that went with it was also gold and rare stones. The earrings and ear pendants were gold and amber. The bracelets and coiled armbands too. The clasps were silver, the inset stones gleaming. She held the necklace against her furry breast, looked down at it, then at me again.
     "But, Mikah... why did you do this?" she asked.
     "Because I wanted you to have them," I said. "You don't like them? I don't think they give money back."
     Her jaw and ears dropped. "No, I like them. They're beautiful... spectacular, but..."
     "Then they're yours."
     She stared for a bit longer before carefully closing box. "Mikah, I can't repay this..."
     That damned obligation thing again. "My teacher, you already have. So many times over. More than just bits of metal and colored rocks could ever be worth. If it helps, think of it as me trying to start repaying you for what you've done for me."
     She looked down at the box again, her tufted ears flagging uncertainty. Then she hugged it to her chest. "Thank you," she said in a small voice.
     I stared at her, nonplussed. I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting. Something a bit more than that, I think, but exactly what I couldn't say. I remembered how Jackie had been when I'd surprised her with a gift. Was I looking for something like that? Some sort of gushing enthusiasm? Subconsciously, perhaps I was.
     "Did I do something wrong?" I ventured.
     "What?" she blinked. "You? No... No. You... you keep surprising me. This is... unexpected. I just... why? All this, all this expense, just for your tradition?"
     I hesitated. "For that and because I wanted to. I wanted to and I could, so I did. I saw them in a jewelers in Shattered Water and thought of you. They're beautiful too."
     "Rot, Mikah," she closed her eyes and sighed, still hugging the case. "Thank you," she said again, more resolutely this time.
     "You're quite welcome," I said just as silvery bell tinkled. I looked up as a couple of servants stepped into the doorway holding a tray with a covered silver platter and bottle. I tensed. "A? What is it?"
     "Your food, sir," the Rris ventured in a small, rushed voice.
     For a moment all I was thinking about was that there could be anything under that cover: knife, gun, bombs, and my own gun was...
     "Just put it on the table, please," Chihirae said.
     "Yes, ma'am," the servant said, did so, and left quietly. I didn't even hear claws spattering on the tiles.
     I lifted the silver cover. There was a turkey sandwich on the dish beneath. It'd been prepared by someone who knew what I liked.
     "I saw that," Chihirae said.
     "What?"
     "You," she said. "Just a servant and you still weren't entirely sure. You still don't entirely trust them." Chihirae was watching me, ears drooping and the tip of her tail lashing.
     "I don't know..."
     "They will try again, won't they," she said. "You don't think they can protect us."
     "I think..." I started, then just decided to be honest. "I think our hosts will try to protect us. But you are right — they will try again. I don't know how, but they will."
     "And there's nothing we can do?" she asked plaintively.
     She was a teacher. She was used to dealing with cubs squabbling and fighting and asking awkward questions, not used to people with guns attacking her. She was patient and she was gentle and she worked to help children learn. Hell, she was a better person than I could ever be. She didn't deserve this.
     "Be careful," I said. "Don't trust strangers. If you see someone you don't know or who shouldn't be there around your rooms, call for a guard. That's all we can do... until we find out who's behind it."
     Her ears didn't prick up. "And if that can't be done?"
     I didn't want to think about that. "I think it can. Whoever it is has money and they're spending a lot of it and involving a lot of people. They will leave a trail. Someone will know something. Someone will say something. You trust the Mediators to do their jobs: this is where we see if they earn that trust."
     "If they don't?" she said quietly.
     "Then we might have to renegotiate their contract, "I smiled. "At least they don't seem to be trying to kill us," I said, thinking to reassure her, but she shuddered, her ears went back flat and I mentally kicked myself. "That's not going to happen," I hastened. "They aren't going to take us. Either of us."
     "Mikah, it happened once. They... I can't take that again."
     I'd never asked her for details about what'd happened to her and I wasn't about to start. "It won't," I said. "I swear to you... I will do whatever it takes."
     The expression on her face was... hopeful, quizzical, disbelieving, mournful, surprised... I simply couldn't read it. Muscles around her muzzle twitched, so did her ears. Then she looked down at the jewelry case hugged to her chest and back to me again. Finally she said, "I believe you will. Thank you, Mikah. Now, you are hungry and I am very tired. If you will excuse me?" she ducked her head and turned and stalked silently out.
     "Good night, Chihirae," I said and watched her leave for long after she was gone.

An early start. There were Rris in my rooms. Shutters were flung open onto grey predawn light and ice. Staff bustled around, urging me to get up and leave a perfectly good and warm bed in exchange for a cold and busy day. I eventually capitulated and dragged myself out from under the heavy duvets before they brought in siege engines. At least the heated rooms were warm enough. I considered going for a run to wake myself up, but decided against it: time was against me, my leg still ached, and god only knew how the local staff would take to me running around their halls.
     Instead I stood under the shower for as a long as I could, working my shoulder to try and ease some of the stiffness out. Clean and pressed clothes were laid out waiting for me when I emerged. As was a small staff led by Yeircaez waiting to help me dress. I chased them out and dressed myself. They were my own clothes — linen and furs — so they fit and were warm enough for winter.
     There was breakfast in the lounge: turkey-pot pie, wine and orange juice, smoked bison strips and fresh bread rolls with butter and cream and something that tasted a lot like marmalade.
     When I was finished Yeircaez announced I had guests. Chaeitch, Rraerch, Rohinia, and Hedia were waiting in the lounge. The Mediator was in his usual travel-stained grey coat and utilitarian leathers, gleaming pistols and blades in their bandoliers. The other two were in their business clothes: Chaeitch in finely embroidered gray and green waistcoat and kilt; Rraerch in a glaring autumn-orange tunic and dark breeches. Both groomed and polished and gleaming in the light of the rising sun peeking through the windows.
     "Morning and waking," Hedia greeted me. "I hope you found the quarters satisfactory?"
     "A. Very comfortable, thank you," I said.
     "Excellent news," she smiled and opened a messenger-style bag to produce a small booklet. "I have here your itinerary for today."
     "It looks like a busy one," Chaeitch offered. "And I'm afraid you're not going to like what's first."
     I sighed. "Physicians?"
     He looked at the others and his ears flicked back. "Sorry."
     "They've been told to treat you well," Hedia said, somewhat defensively. I'd heard that before. She glanced through the booklet then snapped it shut. "That is first at the university. That will take the morning. Then there are discussions with physicians and scientists and [natural philosophers]. That will last until the mid-afternoon. Then you will be brought back here and given time to prepare for this evening's proceedings. Is that satisfactory?"
     We had an escort to the university. It was... considerable. They'd erred on the side of caution so there were approximate fifty armed guards in the convoy. Just leaving the palace grounds was a serious military maneuver, with our carriages surrounded by guns and pointy metal.
     It was my first daylight look at Red Leaves. As with Shattered Water, the palace estate was on the outskirts, a couple of kilometers from the city itself. We left the front gate and turned onto a snow-bound avenue, the old trees lining it stretching bare branches out over the road. Also in common with Shattered Water and other cities I'd seen, the outskirts were a belt of affluence: a ring around that city that wasn't too crowded but not too far away for a day's travel. The houses there were large and nestled out of sight behind walls and among trees and pseudo-wilderness.
     The city itself had originated as a walled fortress on the huge isthmus between the two bays. It'd outgrown its walls several times, reaching toward the harbor at the river in one direction and the bay in the other, stretching it into an oval that was almost five kilometers at its broadest. The old center of the city still nestled in the fragmented remnants of its walls. A newer center had evolved outside the constrictions of the old town, where traffic could move. That was a center of newer buildings, of commercial and retail. Beyond that was light manufacturing and production. Heavier industry and manufacturing lay on the existing outskirts and then spreading off beyond, down the Delmarva Peninsula and up towards the mainland, the fields and farms of the city's bread basket.
     The university was in the old part of the city. Actually, it was a large part of the old part of the city — a meandering hodgepodge of different buildings joined and linked and abutted and annexed. Two and three stories constructions. Brick against plaster and timber frame against split wooden tiles and weather board. All occupying most of a city block.
     A rusty iron front gate wailed open onto a flagstone courtyard outside a reasonably modern three-story building. New enough that city smoke hadn't begun to stain the pale gray stone. Tall windows with canary-yellow mullions stared down from arched recesses. Behind them were many eyes of the common, lesser-seen student trying to catch a furtive peek at what was going on. Guards surrounding the courtyard ensured they stayed there.
     The dignified, elder scholars who greeted me stared every bit as much as the students had and were even less subtle about it. Hedia introduced us to a grey-whiskered rector who labored her way through a flowery greeting while the rest of the faculty gawped and muttered urgently to one another. The welcomes were quickly out of the way, then we were led through the hodgepodge of architecture to a room tucked away somewhere in the depths of the university.
     I'd seen rooms like that before. A workroom. With high windows for light and large stoves to keep the place warm. A wooden floor, the planks worn smooth and shiny by time and traffic. Walls hung with drawings and anatomies of strange and exotic creatures. Shelves bending under the weight of books. Cabinets crammed with their grotesque ranges of stuffed animals and large jars of murky liquid in which creatures, and parts of creatures, hung suspended. An articulated Rris skeleton hung grinning cheerfully in a corner. There were the desks for writing on, littered with books and scrolls and stacks of papers and inkwells and blotters and pots of sand. The desks formed a perimeter around three sides of a cleared space over in front of the windows, where the light was good.
     "Here?" Rohinia asked.
     "Yes, constable. This room is usually used for life studies. It's been cleared, but they did insist on keeping their reference materials."
     I wondered what the place looked like before they cleaned it.
     "Huhn," Rohinia waved assent, looking around. "Very good. Just understand this: you can talk to him. You can ask him questions. The contract tolerates that. But the first time you try something that can injure him, it's over."
     "Huhn. That's... Yes, understood, sir. But, sir, we were wanting to take a blood sample. I understand that's agreed upon."
     "Then also understand you'll be the one explaining to his lordship why his honored and extremely valuable guest is ill from blood poisoning if something does... slip. A?"
     A pause. Ears hadn't gone down, but the dozen or so university scholars there were all in that rigid stance that indicated they were trying not to flag anger or shock. Finally their spokesperson grimaced and said. "This is quite understood."
     The other Rris looked irritated, but they weren't stupid enough to complain.
     The examination was as bad as I expected it to be. They were the Rris version of biologists, zoologists, and life-studiers. Not the professional scientist the fields had evolved into back home, rather these were like the 18th century scientific gentlemen, explorers still striking out into the hinterlands of their fields in their quests for undiscovered journals to attach their names to. They had theories and ideas, and I was a source of information, in more ways than one.
     So there was testing and poking and prodding and flexing and bending. They looked into my eyes, ears, nose, throat. Then I had to disrobe. I'd been through it before and it was still embarrassing. Not that they were anything other than utterly professional. There were exclamations at the scars and bruising now on clear display, but apart from that they treated me like a piece of meat. A specimen. Rraerch — bless her little cotton socks — understood some of my peculiarities and had ushered Hedia away from there, taking the time to visit the Land-of-Water embassy. But there were still a dozen of their scholars, male and female, staring at me in clinical fascination. Chaeitch and Rohinia stayed to make sure no-one got too carried away. Chaeitch looked concerned; the Mediator looked... impassive.
     I'd been through this before. It helped to think of it like a usual doctor's physical — it wouldn't be entirely pleasant, it would be uncomfortable, and then it would be done. So I suffered quietly and cooperated: answered the questions as best I could about why this was there, why there were only two of these, why I didn't have one of those. They produced tape measures and calipers and physically measured everything: height and weight, limb length and circumference, muscle groups, bones, fingers and toes, hair, ears, genitals, teeth... everything. They made charts and drew sketches. They asked questions about what I could see, hear, think about. They broke into heated debates about why I was like this or that. It all started to run together: surrounded by painfully intent scholars, the Rris features blurring together into a wall of furry faces.
     Thank god that eventually ended. Eventually. After a few hours that lasted an eternity. Quite honestly the reason for the whole performance escapes me. It seemed every kingdom wanted to convince themselves I wasn't a Rris in a fancy costume and to do that seemed to involve humiliation, discomfort, embarrassing situations, and the sampling of bodily fluids.
     Things were more civilized — or at least less humiliating — that afternoon. The interviews took place in a proper lecture theater, a sort I'd had experience with before back in Shattered Water. The room was circular and high-ceilinged. A semi-circular well of staggered tiers of desks ran around the periphery, stacked a dozen desks high. Down in the focus of that well was tiled stage. Sunlight filtered down from a circular skylight high overhead, glaring from the white tiles. There was a fixed plinth for a speaker down there: a raised podium like a preacher's pulpit with a curved sound-shell rearing up behind it like the hood of a great wooden cobra. There was also a chalkboard and a simple table with a jug of water, a glass, and a single cushion.
     The sibilant susurrus of subdued Rris conversation fell off as I entered the theatre. I stopped, looking up at the ranks of hairy faces staring back. Hundreds of them. A hand patted my arm and Rohinia muttered quietly, "Come on. Just get it done."
     "Get it done," I echoed and took a breath. "A."
     I didn't use the table. Sitting on a cushion down there in front of those eyes felt too exposed, and I'd had enough of that for one day — my arm was sore where they'd drawn blood and my scarred shoulder ached where it'd been poked. So I stood while a ranking faculty member introduced me and reiterated the ground rules, emphasizing the Guild would step in if any inappropriate questions came up.
     And there were questions. They started off cautiously, as if the ranks of students and scholars up there thought they were the butt of some kind of prank. Where did I come from? Could I explain what happened? This multiple world idea, was it an accredited theory where I came from? Could I prove my information was actually reliable? How about I describe some of the fossils they'd found? What might the creatures have looked like? How and why did the different creature's forms distort so with time and geology? How far is the sun from the Earth?
     And as things got rolling the questions picked up. There were easy questions, or at least questions I had answers to: what caused the mountains on the moon? Is there air and water there? Are asteroids associated with the stars? How old is the earth? What was there before and where did it come from? Do the continents really move? How does the heart make blood?
     Then there were tougher ones: what is everything made of? Where does heat go and why does everything tend toward cold? How can perpetual motion work? How do magnets work? How do parental genetics determine offspring traits? Where does the universe end? And then there were the downright weird ones: what is the best way to diffract water? Is salt an essential element of the living body? What is the geometric perfect form the universe strives for? And of course, what am I having for dinner tonight?
     That last one sticks in my memory. I think that lady was a little confused.
     The Rris in our little party lurked in the background. Chaeitch sat back against the wall, smoking his pipe and looking... bored. So was Rraerch. Perhaps a little concerned. Rohinia stood by in case someone asked something that the Guild didn't like. There wasn't a lot of that: most of the questions were abstract or innocuous enough that he only had to step in a couple of times. The Rris asking the questions looked disappointed, but there was no protest.
     How long did that go on for? It must've been about four hours. Four hours of speaking a language my vocal chords had never been designed for. Toward the end I was rasping and stumbling badly over some of the more difficult words, the ones that required gutturals and a moist mouth to pronounce. When and end was finally called there was no applause, they just stared at me while the rector thanked me for my time.
     I understood what the purpose of that session was. It wasn't so much about what I knew — they'd take the chance to pick my brains in detail later on. It was more of a test to show everyone that I was on the level; that I wasn't a trained animal or a Rris in a suit. I was something that wasn't Rris but still knew things that they didn't. The word would spread like gossip through the halls of a highschool.
     Out of there, out in the carriages, I collapsed back into the seat and closed my eyes. Shuddered violently. Rraerch was waiting there and Chaeitch, Hedia, and Rohinia seated themselves. Chaeitch settled himself beside me while the other three took the opposite bench. Outside, orders were barked as our guards prepared to move off.
     "How did it go?" Rraerch asked.
     "Well," Chaeitch offered. "Mikah, you behaved yourself."
     I just nodded.
     "Your voice is hurting?"
     Okay, that didn't translate so well. I nodded again. He understood that.
     "Huhn. Nevertheless, that was good. And you didn't even have to smile at anyone."
     Funny guy.
     Shadows were coming in, pooling in alleys and corners as the light softened. It was snowing again. More flakes swirled in to add white to the world. Rris were moving around out there, going about their business. I saw snow-covered stalls in a market. Iron braziers and grills glowed red and I smelled smoke and food cooking. Shouts and catcalls and Rris voices ebbed and waned. Cubs were throwing snowballs at a framework of frozen wind chimes hanging from a porch, raising another sort of ruckus. Further along we passed what looked surprisingly like road works blocking off half the urban street. There were snow-covered mounds of spill, loaded wagons, a gaping hole dug down to a big brickwork pipe. I saw hod carriers hauling loads of bricks down before we passed by out of sight. Work on sewers? Of course they'd all have to be built and expanded and maintained. I wondered how old they were, how extensive.
     Buildings were a little different from Shattered Water. There was more stone construction and it seemed a bit heavier, especially the roofs. I supposed they had to deal with occasional Atlantic storms blowing up and down the coast. Did superstorms hammer the seaboard here like they did back home? Probably not. Although, I did notice a couple of buildings with marks suspiciously like bullet holes on the facades.
     "You are prepared for tonight?" Rraerch asked.
     I blinked at her.
     "The reception," she prodded. "You remember?"
     "Oh. A. Oh, not really," I said. "These affairs are always..." I sighed and hunted for a word. "Tense."
     "You should just relax and enjoy yourself," Chaeitch said. "I'm sure the food and drink will be excellent."
     "I can assure you it will be," Hedia offered.
     "You might want to moderate that," Rohinia suggested. "Getting drunk could lead to more misunderstandings."
     "Last time a stiff drink saved my life."
     Hedia looked startled and Rohinia's muzzle wrinkled in a frown. "There won't be any repeats of that."
     "Famous last words."
     Rraerch spoke up. "I hear you gave Chihirae a gift."
     "A," I said.
     "I hear it's... extravagant."
     "You hear a lot," I said.
     "She... wanted to talk to me about it," Rraerch said, making it sound like a confession. "She was confused. She showed me. That jewelry is exquisite. You had a reason?"
     "A," I said tiredly. My throat was still sore. I really hoped I wouldn't have to do a lot of speaking that night. "There're going to be a lot of important people there tonight, aren't there?"
     "A," Hedia said. "Lords and ladies, associates of his highness, guild and merchant leaders."
     "Many teachers?"
     "I..." Hedia started to say, then cocked her head. "Not a great number, no."
     "Thought not," I said. "Don't know how important they are, or think they are. But they're probably not accustomed to someone they consider a 'teacher' moving in their circles. They will be... what's the word..."
     "Cruel?" Rraerch offered.
     I weighed that for a while. "A," I said. "That fits. I wanted her to have some armor against that."
     "And making this armor out of gold will protect her?"
     "I know she doesn't have anything like the glitter I've seen worn at these events. I was hoping it might help. What do you think?"
     Hedia looked from me to Rraerch, head tracking like a spectator at a tennis match.
     Rraerch paused. "I don't think I can say for certain. It's a gift. Just that fact might not impress too many."
     I nodded. "What would?"
     "Well," Chaeitch spoke up, fiddling awkwardly with his pipe as the carriage rocked. "Most of those worthies have taken their spoils their own way. Or their ancestors. So taken, stolen, inherited, found, even earned."
     "Sir!" Hedia protested.
     He didn't even look up from tamping his pipe. "Of course, terrible thing for me to say. Quite out of place."
     "One possibility," Rraerch said. "If she hadn't saved your hide, you wouldn't be here. So payment for services rendered is an option."
     I instinctively started to object. By my standards that was crass and bordering on outright insulting. But... my standards weren't what mattered here. I swallowed my protestations. "Would that be more acceptable?"
     "A," Chaeitch said easily. "Certainly more so than debt for status. She took, wasn't given."
     I grimaced. It wasn't what I'd intended at all. "If that's what it takes, then that's what it is. Still, those wouldn't even begin to start repaying what I owe her."
     "That's something people will understand," Rraerch said.
     "So long as it's also understood they are hers," I said and looked at the Mediator. "No matter what happens to me, they are hers. Her property to do what she will with."
     Rohinia cocked his head. "There's a reason for that?"
     "A. I just want it to be clear. I don't want people saying she's nothing of worth. Does that make sense?" I studied the Rris faces, trying to see if I'd gotten through. Rraerch looked thoughtful. Hedia just looked uncertain.
     "I believe so," Chaeitch said.
     "A," Rraerch said. "And would you perhaps like her to have some assistance with a wardrobe?
     "I don't know," I admitted. "Does she need it?"
     She flicked an ear. "I'll poke my nose in and have a word with her, a?"
     I smiled. "That might be a good idea. Thank you."

Snow continued to fall through the end of the gray afternoon and on into a gray evening. No wind, just a crackling, static, dry chill from which flakes fell without fuss, congealing from the sky silently and continuously. I'd asked if that winter was unusually cold. No, I'd been told. The one a decade ago when the roads had been buried under two meters of snow had been worse. And the one five years ago. There'd been deaths. Not from the cold; that Rris could handle, but from fires and poisoning when chimneys had been blocked.
     So snow fell, gently smothering the world. It covered the roads, built up on rooftops and along walls and branches. It buried grass and bushes and muffled sounds of the city. As we trundled through the gatehouse I wondered if they might be cancelling the evening's activities, but then figured it'd probably take more than this. If they had to they'd simply use sleighs.
     The loop at the end of the drive had turned into an unsullied pool of white. Beyond it the bulk of the palace was lost in the whiteout, but lamps being lit along the façade were enough to made the entrance hall loom from the flurries like the flanks of some great ship.
     Inside it wasn't much warmer, but more lamps were burning. Servants bustled about, polishing everything that could be polished and trying to catch furtive glimpses of me as my escorts hustled me through to the guest quarters.
     There was time to prepare. I made use of the shower: turning it on full and then standing under that indoor waterfall letting the steaming hot water pummel me for a good long while. Apart from the drumming of the water it was peaceful. No-one disturbed me; Noone stared at me or poked at me or asked crazy questions. There were no alien voices, no demands, no shocked stares. I took as long as I felt I could, then shut the water off, stepped out of the swirling clouds of steam, and grabbed one of the tablecloth-sized towels to dry off with, scrubbing at my hair as I wandered back through to the bedroom. The heating system worked surprisingly well: the tiled floor was actually warm under my feet.
     Staff had been busy. My suit for the evening was hung out on a valet stand, with the wrinkles and mileage from weeks on the road cleaned and pressed out. And Jenes'ahn was waiting, sitting tailor-fashion on the bed. I hesitated, surprised, but wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of being discomforted by her presence.
     "What're you doing here?" I asked. "Shouldn't you be getting ready?"
     It was the first I'd seen of her after that first night. The shotgun wounds were superficial, but they still looked nasty. And painful. Lacerations were dug through her facial and head fur; a half-dozen fleshy-red furrows radiating away from above her right eye which was squinting shut slightly. The top half of her right ear was shredded. Hell, there was a hole punched clean through what remained of it.
     "In fact," I added, "should you be up and about? I mean with the..." I gestured to my own head, indicating her wounds.
     "Scratches," she said dismissively. "They'll heal."
     "They'll scar," I corrected. And I knew from experience how much they stung. That probably wasn't helping her normally-sunny disposition.
     She snorted. "A. Not the first."
     I blinked. I hadn't seen anything like that on her. But... I hadn't seen that much of her. Even when we'd been in a bath house she'd kept her uniform on. Was there another reason for that? And now I was wearing only a towel and the remains of a shower. Nothing she hadn't seen before.
     "I'm here to make sure you get prepared."
     "I can do that myself," I replied as I went to sort through the clothes that'd been laid out. As far as Rris formal dress went it wasn't too bad. "And since when was that one of your duties?"
     "Since you started carrying guns," she said. "You've only got the two?"
     I hesitated. "You noticed."
     "I can count shots fired," she said.
     "Ah," I nodded. "Just the two."
     "Show me."
     I did. She weighed them, one in each hand: the bright steel one and the black one. "So that's what that was about," she growled. "'Black and white'. Huhn. We will have to have a talk with him."
     I shrugged.
     "Anything else I should know about?"
     "No," I said.
     Amber eyes flashed, giving me a long, hard look which I knew from experience was an exercise in futility — she might get it right, but the more likely result was confusion or a wrong impression. Each dangerous enough in its own way. "You don't intend to take some kind of weapon along tonight?"
     "I hadn't been planning on it. Why? Do you think I need one?"
     "I think it could look exceedingly bad if you were found to be carrying anything of the sort around his lordship. It would speak a lot about trust, or lack of. It would also make guards very nervous. It might also give other people excuses they might not otherwise have had. And, if you were to have a weapon you might feel obliged to use it when there are other options."
     I considered that. When all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. "I don't like these things, but they've saved my life. Hell, they saved your life last night."
     Her ears twitched back, including the lacerated one. She visibly winced and then glowered. "No such thing happened."
     "No," I nodded. "Of course not."
     She studied me again and this time her tail lashed. Just once. "Remember that. And how did you know to keep going through that ambush?"
     I shrugged. "I read it in a book once."
     A pause. "You are... simplifying things again?"
     "Somewhat. It's easier. But it's close."
     "Huhn," she said. "You do seem to have learned a lot from these books. Unfortunately they didn't teach you things which might be more useful tonight. Now, you do recall that you have a contract with the Guild, don't you."
     I sighed. "Oh, I remember."
     "You wanted our cooperation, so we will have yours. You will listen to and obey our requirements."
     "Orders," I clarified. "A."
     "Then you will absolutely not carry any weapons tonight. Is that clear?"
     "A."
     "You will have staff in here shortly to help you prepare. Don't cause them any problems — they do understand what's necessary probably better than you do. You will be quiet and polite tonight. Let other people open their mouths before you do. Don't spend too much time with anyone — that can cause jealousies or suspicions. Don't discuss technical issues. Don't draw attention to yourself..."
     I had to cough a laugh at that. "Seriously? Look, I know you've been to these things before. I'm about as unobtrusive as a llama in library."
     "You know what I mean," she snapped. "You don't have to make a scene. The guests will have been told what to do: they won't mob you. There will be orderly circulating. You will be introduced to people. You will be civilized and polite. Just follow your cues and there will be no problems."
     I almost laughed again and asked for that in writing, but she was as serious as a heart attack. And that threw a chunk of ice into my guts. It wasn't just me who was going to be in the thick of it. "Are you expecting trouble? If there's anything like that coming then there's no way Chihirae is going down there! She's staying..."
     "No..." she interjected. "We're not expecting difficulties. We're simply trying to minimize the chances of them happening. Now, get dressed; get that hairless hide covered," she said as she headed for the door. "And listen to your staff about grooming: they know better than you what's acceptable."
     "A, all right," I sighed. "Oh, and Jenes'ahn?"
     She turned. "Yes?"
     "You're welcome."
     Her muzzle twitched. A hard lash of the tail as she turned and was gone. Staff filtered in almost immediately. A half-dozen, locals and our own people with their tools and equipment and all of them looking anxious.
     "Sir," Yeircaez greeted me with a small bow. "We were told this time is convenient?"
     That was couched uncertainly. He'd seen saw the Mediator was annoyed and that made him nervous.
     "A," I sighed. "It's fine. Let's get this done."

Lamps burned throughout the long halls of the palace. They weren't particularly bright, but they'd made up for that in numbers. Staff moved unobtrusively, keeping them tanked up and adjusting the wicks as necessary. They filled the air with a fine haze of smoke from aerosolized oils and wicks. Guards in spotless armor stood at attention. The sound of Rris voices rose and fell like the sound of distant surf. Rris nobility alone and in small groups drifted toward the sound, their clothing painfully loud, lamplight flashing from precious metals. They stared. They murmured. They gossiped.
     The lanky Land-of-Water Ambassador hastened alongside us in a white and grey kilt and tunic trimmed with gold. He'd joined us outside the guest quarters and hurried to explain the rules for the night that'd just been laid out to him as we walked. There would be a lot of people and there would be questions, but an order had been established, he said. I wouldn't be mobbed, he said. His lordship had made it clear that an unfavorable view would be taken upon anyone who jumped queue. He didn't elaborate on what that meant. Then Ah Fefthri started with a list of who's who; a deluge of names and titles that I hadn't a prayer of keeping up with.
     There were a big set of white-lacquered double-doors. They opened onto bright lights and heat and the funk of Rris and the noise became a crash of sound. I followed Chaeitch and Rraerch and the mediators through to stand at the top of a short staircase. The sound abruptly muted as hundreds of heads turned and almost twice as many eyes stared.
     My guts tightened. Sweat trickled in the small of my back.
     The ballroom seemed at least basketball-court sized, stretching away to a far wall of French doors. Other walls were cream plaster, set with alcoves hung with curtains from behind which peeked burnished mirrors. Columns between the alcoves stretched from floor to the high ceiling where three huge chandeliers hung: peculiarly elegant masses of bright metal piping and gleaming crystal, burning with the brightness of gas, not candles. Just below the ceiling, right around the circumference of the room, were paintings. A painting. An endless mural depicting... burning towns and battles and Rris dying and gore and bones and... Too much to take in at a glance. The floor was polished wooden parquetry laid in a design I couldn't see due to the crowds of Rris now staring at me. At us.
     It's the same effect that being in a busy isle in a supermarket had on your brain: There's too much information to process, so it doesn't try. It shuts down and just provides a sampling, turns the world to a smear of color and impressions. That's what I got.
     A sea of alien heads, eyes flashing as they caught the light. Ears pricked up. Their clothing was as gaudy and prismatic as an accident in a rainbow factory. Brilliant, saturated colors, contrasting hues, the flash of polished gems and precious metals. Every kind of material, from simple leather to beaten metal to crushed fabrics. I saw a Rris wearing strips of gold cloth hanging from a necklace, another in armor made from silver filigree. One female was wearing what looked like a princes Leia bikini with six whorls where the cups would be. Another in local clones of denim jeans studded with rhinestones. Or perhaps real gemstones.
     And they stared back.
     Rris formal wear didn't really suit me. For one thing, I didn't consider it very formal. An ensemble that looked like a stoned rococo artist's interpretation of the Sergeant Pepper album cover didn't work for me. At all. Likewise the Rris thought my idea of subdued evening wear more appropriate to the garb a servant or chimney sweep might wear. Compromises were made.
     So what I ended up with vaguely resembled a formal dress uniform. From the 1800s. It consisted of a three-piece suit of frock-coat, waistcoat, and pants. The coat was violently cadmium red, faced with dark blue, and trimmed with gold. The waistcoat under it was a deeper shade of red, inlaid with gold thread in a scale-like pattern and in a xylophone-like galloon down the front. There was an annoying, but very expensive, lace ruffle at the throat. The pants were a blue to match the facing on the coat, to Rris eyes almost black. An expensive color to dye, here. My hair and beard were combed and brushed out and carefully tied back until they almost resembled a Rris' winter pelt draped down over the shoulders of the coat. A peace-tied blade was hung at my waist. Upon closer inspection it'd turned out there wasn't a blade at all, just a decorative handle and sheath.
     It wasn't the mafia-accountant style of pressed blacks that'd become clichéd back home. To my eyes it seemed preposterously ostentations, but compared with the veritable visual cacophony swirling in front of me, it was the epitome of subdued eveningwear.
     The clothes were heavy and stiff and the fabric pretty coarse, and there were buckles everywhere. No silk or elastic here. The frock coat wasn't as heavy as my brigantine coat, but it felt almost as bulky. I'd tried to find a position in which it hung comfortably and the collar didn't try and sever my jugular. Standing ramrod-straight seemed the best option. Chaeitch and Rraerch were resplendent in their glittering, baroque finery. The two Mediators flanked us like gloomy storm birds in their road-stained gray and black. Jene'sahn's new wounds were livid tracks across her face, making her look preternaturally intimidating. Chihirae... I'd stared when I'd seen her.
     She'd looked pleased. "What?"
     "You look... good," I said. In truth, I'd even startled myself. That was the first time I'd reacted to her like that. Just thinking she looked... beautiful.
     Her fur had been brushed and combed until it rippled with a lustrous sheen. She was wearing the jewelry I'd given her. The gold burned in the lamplight, the intricate necklace and bracelet and earrings aflame against her pelt, against the dress.
     A real dress. An evening gown. It looked... familiar. From those pictures she'd been looking at on the laptop. Well, mostly. It'd been based on those, but adapted for the Rris form and... hirsuteness. It hugged her figure, looping up around the back of the neck. She didn't have a cleavage, or a bust for that matter, so the plunging neckline really didn't reveal anything except tufted fur. Asymmetrical folds swept down and to the side, revealing a thighhigh slit and more fur. A convoluted little cutout freed her tail, the metronomic flick of the tip betraying some unease. The fabric was almost blood red: a deep, beyond-burgundy color; a hue that must've appeared black to Rris eyes, but for me it was a deeply emotive color against which the gold flared. It made her eyes into two gems brighter than any metal gewgaw. And when she moved she stalked, a sinuous proceeding that'd make an accomplished catwalk supermodel look like a Minister of Silly Walks.
     She didn't look like a back-country winter teacher. She looked... glorious would be an apt starting point. Rris stared. Granted, most were staring at me, but she got her share of calculating and appraising looks.
     Chaeitch glanced back at me as I stared at the crowd and swallowed. "You all right?" he murmured.
     "A," I said past the ringing in my ears.
     They took me at my word and stepped forward. I took a breath and followed them down into the waters.
     The crowd parted around us, swirling, circling like schools of glittering fish. The mediators flanked us like a pair of bruises against the garish colors, and we had guards in Land-of-Water livery trailing, but it didn't appear to be their presence keeping the crowd at bay. Guests moved aside for us. They stared. Hissed whispering sputtered like rain sizzling on a campfire as we walked out into the center of that big room. Standing head and shoulders taller than most Rris, I was able to see over the crowd, which meant they could see me. No matter where I looked faces were turned my way.
     Not like a human ball. There was an orchestra playing some Rris composition that was all strings, percussion, and strange harmonies, but there was no dancing, no promenading. And the crowd wasn't homogenous in its distribution — there were groups and clusters and individuals all circulating in the brownian motion of interpersonal interactions. They weren't herd or pack creatures, so even here their personal space was greater and more sacrosanct than a human would consider social. And while the costumes were spectacular, there wasn't so much of the anthropomorphism. I mean — they dressed in finery and expense and a bewildering array of designs, but they didn't tend to dress like something. Human costume balls, the masquerades — the western style ones I was familiar with from entertainment anyway — always had their shares of peacocks, raptors, lions, wolves, bears... however stylized they may be. The Rris just didn't do that. I saw costumes of gold-plated armor; tunics of woven silver mail; velvet doublets festooned with intricate embroidery; a woman in what looked like a clanging kilt of polished steel slats and vertical leather straps down her torso with red-painted nipples peeking through. There was a hat like a glassblower's hiccoughs; painted and shaved patches of fur; spectacles with intricate frames and tinted glass. One female had her face fur shaved in the vague shape of a domino mask, across her broad muzzle and down her cheeks, then the bare flesh had been coated with gold foil.
     There was imagination and variety in their costumes, but they didn't depict anything in particular. I wondered what that said about them. Or us for that matter.
     As we proceeded I was watching a lady dressed in a tunic that looked it was made of thousands of pieces of polished silver, all cut so the dark fabric between the mirror-bright metal formed fanciful whorls and patterns. She stared back at me with wide, amber-rimmed eyes before fading back into the crowd. Someone nudged me and when I looked around the crowd had parted and the Rris king was strolling towards us, guards close behind.
     "Aesh Smither. Ah Ties," ah Thes'ita greeted them. He was comparatively subdued in his attire: a grey and blue tunic and kilt trimmed with canary yellow and shot through with threads of silver. He wore it like a uniform. His escort stood back a bit, eyeing me suspiciously. "It's a pleasure having you here tonight. Thank you for your kindly acceptance of our invitation. I know it was an arduous journey and I appreciate the difficulties and [sacrifices] you made."
     I couldn't quite translate that, but it wasn't the time or place to ask.
     "Thank you, sir," Rraerch replied. "A difficult crossing, but your hospitality does warm some cold stones. We are very appreciative of the efforts you have made."
     The Rris king inclined his head in acknowledgement and turned amber eyes my way. "Ah Rihey," he greeted me. "Welcome and gratitude to you. I must say you are looking very striking. Very civilized."
     "Thank you, sir."
     "And this is the teacher? Aesh Hiasamra'this? After everything I've heard I've been most looking forward to meeting you. Your apartments are satisfactory?"
     "Yes, sir," Chihirae said, flinching her head down in a quick nod of respect. "Very much so."
     "I'm glad they meet with your approval." He cocked his head minutely. "And you certainly look exceptional tonight, aesh Hiasamra'this. More than a mere teacher should."
     I almost took insult at that, but Chihirae ducked her head again. "Thank you most kindly, sir."
     "That is the fashion in Shattered Water these days, a?"
     "No, sir. A fashion from Mikah's people, sir," she said.
     "A? I haven't heard of him dressing like that."
     "Huhn, ah, no, sir. Apparently only their women do."
     He blinked. "Is there a reason for that?"
     "I just don't have the legs for it," I offered and received a blank, uncomprehending stare.
     "It's something that really only makes sense to him," Chihirae quickly provided, her ears flicking back. Embarrassed? They do feel it, under different pressures.
     "Huhn, like his habit of showing teeth in amusement. Does that happen often?"
     "Yes, sir," she made it sound like an admission. "Surprisingly often, sir."
     Of course everyone around us who could was watching, listening. "I trust that won't be an issue," ah Thes'ita said lightly. "You will walk with me later. We will talk. Perhaps you can explain it. Now... now I am obliged to be a decent host, so, understand:"
     He didn't shout, but his words carried. Ears in the watching crowd twitched. "Problems and disputes are unwelcome here tonight, as is disrespect for the rules laid out. Ah Rihey, aesh Hiasamra'this, I welcome you as my guests and offer my hospitality and protection and expect you to be accorded the respect due anyone under my roof. Words have been given and they will be obeyed. "
     The crowed watched. Predators around a watering hole.
     The Rris king cocked his head and in a lighter tone said, "And of course it would not do to monopolize my guests. Please — mingle, meet, talk. There is food and drink that should be safe for you. If there's anything you require, simply ask. Enjoy."
     "Thank you, sir," I said.
     "Most generous," Rraerch said.
     In return, Ah Thes'ita simply inclined his head almost imperceptibly, then he and his retinue stalked off into the crowd. The crowd closed behind them, circling us again.
     Ah Fefthri had said there was a pecking order. So far the crowd seemed to be adhering to it. They stared and I heard the whispering as murmured noise. But I saw Chihirae's ears go back and wondered what she'd heard that I hadn't.
     "I heard a mention of food," I said to her, distracting her. "That sounds like a good place to start. You hungry?"
     "You aren't going to be drinking," Jenes'ahn growled.
     "Oh, you can't be too sure," I said airily. "The night is still young, a?"
     "That wasn't what I..." she started but I just walked away, leaving her to fume and hurry after me.
     Chaeitch, Rraerch, and Chihirae stayed close as I headed in the direction the Rris king had indicated. People shifted out of our way so we proceeded in a moving hole in the crowd surrounded by stares and whispers.
     "That?!" I heard. "It's not a person!"
     "She is? But it's... look at it!"
     "... are we bothering with this foolishness?"
     There was food over there: long tables covered with sky-blue linen, decorated with carvings and candelabra, and laden with silver trays and chafing dishes and bowls and saucers. Glasses of wine and brandy and other beverages stood arrayed in artful patterns. The appetizing aromas of cooking mingled with the scents of Rris and tallow candles. Of course it was mostly meat — slabs and slices and cubes and pies of meat catering for carnivore tastes, but there were exceptions. The pies were usually good, you just had to be aware of what was in them. Or not care.
     "You alright?" I quietly asked Chihirae as she tried a construction not unlike a kebab.
     "Huhn?" she blinked. "Oh, a. It's... not as bad as I feared. And the food's good."
     "Always a bright side," I smiled; carefully. Murmurs hissed around the crowd. "And where did you get those clothes?"
     "Ah Ties," she said. "He recommended a tailor. Do you like it?"
     "I think you look spectacular," I said and sampled a broad glass of pale liquor. It wasn't bad, and what I said wasn't a lie. For me the outfit wasn't the ballistic submarine carrier in the war of the sexes that it would've been on a human woman — she simply didn't have the same curves in the right places — but it was still startlingly elegant on her. "You might start a new trend."
     She preened and nipped at the hot meat on a stick with sharp little teeth. Then her expression changed and she nodded to something behind me. "Mikah," she said.
     A noble had stepped from the crowd, showed Rohinia something. The Mediators stepped aside and the Rris approached me, looking me up and down. Not overly tall, solidly built. The gray and tawny stippled fur of his face didn't have any obviously unique markings, but his clothes were flashy enough: vest of fine green linen, tan breeches, and an intricately tooled leather vest decorated with panels of chased silver. As he got closer I could see the metal was expensive, but the quality of the engraving was superlative. Rings in his ears jangled as they twitched, and from the sound they were surprisingly plain steel.
     "Ah Yaershish," Chaeitch stepped up beside me and murmured. "Huhn. Metal workers Guild. Good man. Clever man. Be careful."
     I rolled the stem of the margarita-like glass between my fingers. I vaguely remembered the name from the brief briefing beforehand, but damned if I could recall any other details. At least I knew he was male.
     "Ah Rihey," he greeted me with an inclination of the head, and then looked at Chihirae. "Aesh Hiasamra'this? I must say it's a pleasure to meet you. May I say you look quite spectacular. That is a most striking attire."
     "Thank you, sir," Chihirae said. She looked pleased. Happy.
     Then the Rris industrialist dipped his head to the others, "Aesh Smither. Ah Ties. Good to see you again. The years have been kind."
     "Ah Yaershish," Rraerch inclined her head. "Pleasure to see you again."
     "It has been a time," Chaeitch said.
     "You've met?" I asked.
     "A," Chaeitch said. "Some while back. I see you've advanced in the Guild. Of course you haven't met Mikah here yet. Mikah, Yahes Ah Yaershish"
     "Ah Yaershish," I returned, trying the name as best I could. "That is correct? That is how it is pronounced?"
     "A," he said. "Quite correct."
     "Well, Ah Yaershish, you have the dubious honor of being first." I asked. "Do you want a drink?" I held my glass up to the light, the liquid a smoky white color. "Whatever this is, it isn't bad."
     He cocked his head, looked from me to Chaeitch to Chihirae to the table, then back at me and seemed to make up his mind. "A, why not," he said, walking over to take a glass. "Huhn, northern apple [something]," he said, sipping. "Surprising choice."
     "Surprising taste," Chaeitch said. "He does display it sometimes."
     "Hey, someone's got to compensate for your lack," I retorted lightly. He hissed and lapped his own drink. The Bluebetter Rris looked uncertain.
     "Now, sir," I said, "You are from the Metalworkers Guild?"
     "A Guild Master now," he corrected, a little archly.
     "Master? I apologize. You seem... young."
     "A," he waved acknowledgement and then brushed at his forearm fur as he said, "Not as many grey furs as some would like. But I know my work."
     "A," Chaeitch agreed. "I had noticed the improvement in Bluebetter steel. Your doing?"
     "I was involved," Yaershish acknowledged. "And of course we've noticed the changes coming out of Land-of-Water. Smither Industries in particular. Your... associate here was involved in that, I hear. You really are behind all these innovations?"
     "Such as your new river boat?" I asked.
     He blinked and then pursed his muzzle in a smile and lapped at his drink. "Lightweight steel boilers. Piston arms milled fine enough to fit like claws into a sheath. High temperature solders and rivets... there are some remarkable ideas there. The new steel smelting process for example, that is yours?"
     "Not mine," I said. "Another of my kind invented them. I just passed the knowledge on."
     "You know about other innovations like this?"
     "A few," I smiled. "Although I'm afraid I'm not supposed to talk about that here tonight. Mediator Guild orders." I nodded my head toward the Mediator twins who were standing close, well within earshot.
     He just acknowledged them with a nod. "Ah. That was mentioned. I dare say we will have more opportunities when you meet with our Guild. You have been told about that?"
     "You probably know more than I do," I said. "I've been given the details of half a hundred people who want to talk with me tonight alone. I don't think I remembered a fifth of that."
     He lapped at his drink again, looking around at the brilliant crowd orbiting and surreptitiously eavesdropping. "Only half a hundred, a?"
     "I stopped counting about there."
     "Ah, understandable," he said. "You seem to have something everyone wants. I'd heard you came from a far-off land, but no-one seems to have details. Is that true?"
     "I don't know about far-off, but I can't return there, so it might as well be."
     He looked puzzled. "What does that mean?"
     "It's a long story, but it means I can't go home."
     "So why did you come here?"
     "Accident. Chance. That's my best guess," I shrugged and then took a slug of the drink, winced. "It wasn't my choice and it seems to be one-way."
     He cocked his head, then glanced back at Chihirae. "You are the only one?"
     "Unless you've heard of someone else like me?"
     "I... can't say I have."
     "Then I suppose I am," I said and sipped again, looking back at the faces watching. People were circulating and trying to be discreet, but everyone was trying to get a look, to listen in. That's a reason I really don't like those sorts of occasions: I can grow accustomed to the Rris, so their appearance isn't such a shock, but that's because I'm exposed to them every day. For them, I'm one-of-a-kind; a novelty. And in situations like that there's a huge number of people trying to get a look at something they haven't seen before. And all of them react differently. There's the intrigued and the fascinated and curious, making light-hearted and perhaps careless remarks and jokes. Then the nervous who hesitate and sometimes duck away, or keep staring despite themselves. And then, inevitably, the looks of shock, of disgust or even outright anger or fear. Sometimes that might be for a reason, other times it's just a knee-jerk xenophobia. It's different so it's wrong.
     All those were there that night. I could feel them; could see them and hear them in the crowd's undertone. Take a breath and let it become part of the background, under the discordant strings of the musicians.
     "And why do you stay in Shattered Water?" he asked.
     "As opposed to moving to Bluebetter?" I returned.
     He waggled a hand. "Well, for example, a."
     "I suppose we've grown accustomed to each other," I said. "We've all made our mistakes and misunderstandings. I'm hoping that's done with. I don't think anyone wants to go through that again."
     "What does that mean?"
     "That's... also complicated. But it's not as if I'm their exclusive property. The Mediators have had something to say about that. It's a reason I'm here in Red Leaves."
     "'A reason'," he noted. "There are others?"
     "Always," I smiled carefully. "Politics, of course."
     "Of course," he smiled back and behind me Rohinia made a small, throat-clearing sort of sound. Yaershish flicked an ear back.
     "And of course, as your escort reminds me, I can't monopolize your time here tonight. It has been interesting. I do look forward to our next meeting."
     "As do I," I said. "And I think we might have a proposal you will find even more interesting."
     "A?" his ears pricked up. "And now you've got my curiosity. I will look forward to it." Then he turned to Chihirae. "And Aesh Hiasamra'this, would you have some time to talk?"
     She looked startled, looked to me.
     I shrugged, human-style. "Your choice," I told her.
     "I..." for a moment she faltered, then smiled. "Yes, sir," she said. "I have time." "Excellent," he said. "I'm sure you have fascinating stories..." and she fell into step with him as they strolled off into the glittering throng.
     "You aren't worried?" Chaeitch murmured.
     "She's an adult," I said. "As I said, her choice."
     "A," he said and nodded at something behind me. "And you've got other concerns."
     "This is ah Rihey?" another voice spoke up.
     Three of them this time: one in to the front with a pair trailing. The foremost one stalked closer, looked hard at me with head tipped. "You can understand me?"
     I considered saying no. Very briefly. Something told me there wasn't much of a sense of humor there. The Rris was short and fairly stocky. Male, I thought. Clothes were... garish: a poncho-like thing and breeches. Loud and bright yellow and orange twining around greens and browns. Lots of jewelry: big earrings and bracelets jangling. The pair behind lurked and dressed like guards, intended to fade into the background: grey, green, and brown leather quilted tunic and heavy breeches, almost heavy enough to be armor and a bit out of place in that room. I stared, not sure why.
     "You can understand?" the Rris demanded again.
     "A. I can understand you," I said.
     The Rris looked me over. "Not as impressive as I'd heard."
     "Sorry to disappoint," I said. "I'll try harder."
     The Rris' tail lashed. "Do you know who I am?"
     "Why? Can't you remember?"
     Conversation around us faltered. There were stares. Chitters rising like fluttering wings.
     "Mikah!" Chaeitch hissed as he hastened to intervene. "Ma'am," oops, "I'm afraid our briefing for this evening was quite rushed. I am Ah Ties."
     "Yes, I know who you are," she replied, tail going like a metronome. "I'm Aesh Waesri. Waesri Shipping. Of course you'll have heard of that?" "A, quite," he said. "Mikah, this is the owner of one of the largest shipping interests on the seaboard."
     "The largest," Waesri corrected stiffly.
     "The largest," Chaeitch calmly corrected.
     "And not accustomed to being told to wait like a petitioner just to see a farmshow freak. One with a big mouth at that. What the rot could something like you possibly have to offer?"
     "So of course you already know how to stop food spoiling while shipping long distances in hot weather without using ice," I said.
     "Mikah," Rohinia said. "You can't discuss that here."
     Waesri's ears went back. "What is that?"
     "Sorry. Can't discuss that," I flashed a smile. "Maybe some other time. I have some other freak show engagements. Perhaps with one of your competitors. Good evening," I sketched a brief bow and then turned and walked away.
     There was an uprising of voices behind me, sound of anger and hasty apologies and then Chaeitch caught up with me as I headed for the open doors.
     "Rot, Mikah," he muttered to me. "That was... undiplomatic."
     "I thought I handled it rather well," I said. "I don't want to be dealing with that sort of shit all night. Perhaps the message will get around."
     "Huhn," he grunted. "It certainly will. But you can't do that!"
     "Being insulted? I gather I was. What is a farmshow anyway?"
     He waved a hand. "A troupe that tours outback villages showing odd things from far away."
     "So it was an insult?"
     "It could be taken as such, a," he admitted.
     "So, giving something to people who insult you isn't usually good sense."
     "If giving, a," he said. "But when they're paying... sometimes you have to be tolerant."
     "Chaeitch, the customer isn't always right," I said. "Sometimes the customer is an asshole. More trouble than they're worth."
     "Is that what that means?"
     "Sort of," I said and then asked, "Who were those two with her?"
     "Them? Bodyguard, I guess. Why?"
     "Just... something about them," I said. "Seemed... familiar."
     "You've seen them before?"
     "Pretty sure I haven't." I shrugged. "Not recently. I think it's the clothes, but I don't know why."
     "Mercenary group of some stripe, most likely. Well, meantime, you've got people to talk to," he said, indicating another Rris approaching. This one wore a fine tunic, waistcoat, and kilt of deep blues and purples trimmed with brilliant orange and greens and yellows in intricate little patterns and designs.
     "Ah Rihey?" said the Rris, sketching a small bow. He wasn't a big Rris and I overtopped him by a full head. I could see his tail was lashing nervous, but he was trying to hide it. "A pleasure to finally meet you. Thank you for your time."
     Perhaps the message did get through.
     "Thank you," I said. "Please forgive me, but I'm afraid my briefing was very rushed. I have dozens to meet tonight and names are a blur."
     An ear flickered. "I am Ah Fe'techi. Weavers Guild."
     "A? Weavers. That explains the wonderful waistcoat."
     "Thank you," he said, standing a little taller. "It was my journeyman project. I must say your associate's apparel was quite spectacular. I haven't seen that style before."
     "It's from where I come from," I said. "She thought it would be... different." "She was quite correct," he said. "Oh, and I think I must apologize for aesh Waesri. She is... opinionated. And, unfortunately, quite willful."
     "But not foolish?"
     "What?" he looked surprised, then shocked. "No. Not that."
     "Huhn." Just a knee-jerk reaction? I'd seen that before. "Well, then, perhaps she can learn."
     "I hope we all have an opportunity," he said. "With everything we'd heard about you it seemed that most of your assistance to Land-of-Water came in the form of machines and metal. But seeing your associate... it seems you might have some interesting ideas in other areas. Do you really think there are better ways for us to work?"
     I thought about that. "I'm not here to tell you how to do your jobs," I finally said. "Not everything I can suggest is better — I've seen instances when changes would be more trouble than they're worth. Especially if they rely upon other services."
     "A," he said. "Examples?"
     "Well, your own Guild. If you had machinery that increased your output ten times... just as an example, you understand, would that be a good thing?"
     "Mikah," Rohinia cautioned. I held up a hand.
     "Purely as a thought-exercise," I said.
     Fe'techi mused on that. "A good thing? Huhn Not necessarily," he finally admitted. "I can't see how wool and linen suppliers could keep up. Or dyers. And then there would be a glut on the market. Demand and prices would drop. That would be... undesirable."
     "A," I agreed. "So I might know of ways to let you produce more, but just doing that might have consequences."
     "Understood," he said, then ventured. "But if suppliers could supply more?"
     "And you could access a wider market?"
     "A. That would be worth considering. You have something in mind?"
     "Too early to say," I said, smiling carefully.
     "Huhn," he said, scratching at his chin. "I must confess, I had my doubts, but I think, perhaps, our formal meeting is going to be very interesting indeed,"
     The evening continued in much the same vein. Guild masters and local lords and merchant leaders drifted in and some words of introduction were exchanged. The talks were short, just pressing flesh and exchanging business cards, so to speak. But it gave them a chance to meet with me. And of course some took it better than others. Waesri's reaction wasn't unique that evening, although the others did manage to contain their tongues after they saw how I reacted to outright insults.
     I lost Chaeitch and Rraerch somewhere along the way, waylaid by various folk and drawn into meetings of their own. The two Mediators stuck with me, grim and persistent shadows among the glitz and glamor who occasionally interjected a word or a look when conversation steered to close to forbidden reefs. I caught a few glimpses of Chihirae. Once looking delighted and proud as she walked with the Bluebetter king. Another time laughing and gesturing, the focus of a small group of fascinated locals.
     She seemed to be enjoying herself. That was a pleasant change for the frightened and uncertain lady of the past few weeks, and that made me feel better. I tried to smooth my smile out in preparation to meet with another prospective petitioner.
     Hours and people passed. Despite the open doors the room heated up and the fug of burning candles and overheated Rris became something you could almost chew. I walked and talked with people who wanted things from me; people who were scared of me; perhaps even some people who'd tried to kill me. My throat hurt. My leg ached. My feet hurt. I was getting a headache, and the names of all the Rris I'd met had run together in a meaningless molasses. I needed some air. I picked up another drink on my way to the open terrace doors. The Mediators just followed without a word. The guards at the doors very pointedly didn't stare at me.
     The night air hit like a bucket of ice water the second I stepped outside onto carved flagstones. It was some late hour. It was darker, quieter, colder. The night sky overhead was black — no stars, no moon, not enough light pollution from the city to reflect off the clouds. Sound and light from inside did spill out through the opened doors and a few lamps burned out there, but not many. Fat snowflakes billowed down into their pools of light, adding to the layers that'd built up on the ground and railings and turned planters and statues to amorphous lumps. Smaller groups of Rris clustered and circulated, probably doing exactly the same thing I was.
     They watched me as I passed by, stepping through drifting snow in dress boots that weren't really intended for that. The terrace overlooked the grounds at the back of the Palace. It was pitch black out there and I couldn't see a damned thing, but it was quiet and cold and a few minutes of that would help. And for a minute I did have some solitude, just leaning elbows on the sculpted stone and sipping a tart wine while snow settled on my coat.
     "Mikah," Jenes'ahn said quietly.
     I straightened, turned, expecting another petitioner and was instead surprised to find the snow staring at me with blue eyes.
     It took me a second. The Rris was small, the top of her head barely up to my sternum. Slender, with a thick winter pelt that was almost pure white; ghostlike in the dark and snow. The insides of her ears were pink, the right one adorned with a tattoo that almost looked like a Celtic knot. Eyes of a shocking azure blue studied me. "Greetings. You can talk, can't you?"
     "I..." I was startled. "A. I can. I was expecting... You aren't quite what I was expecting."
     The head tipped, bird-fast. "And what were you expecting?"
     "Well, someone like the others I've been talking to tonight." I looked the Rris up and down. No ornate clothing or expensive jewelry, just a subdued kilt in a gray tartan pattern. Otherwise the fur was the white of fresh-fallen snow. "Which you don't seem to be. Am I wrong?"
     "Huhn. I'm not guild or merchants."
     "Highborn then?"
     "In a way. Chieth aesh Myri, greeting you. It is ah Rihey, isn't it?"
     "A," I nodded and thought. "Myri... that name's familiar."
     "Overburdened," Rohinia supplied.
     The penny dropped. That was the name of Overburdened's royals. That meant... "You are related?"
     "Second daughter," she said and waved a shrug. I wasn't sure quite what that meant, so skirted around it.
     "You are a long way from home," I said. Overburdened was up north of Cover-my-Tail. Even further away than Land-of-Water. Up in... in what I'd known as Canada. "What are you doing here?"
     "[something] trade," she said simply. "For three years. Learning the skills and meeting those who matter. Tonight was a good night for that."
     I smiled carefully. "I'm surprised they let you. All the local powers have been scrambling over one another to meet me. I didn't think they'd like to, how do you say, share the scraps?"
     "Huhn, a privilege of the position," she said. "No power, but I can ask favors. His highness agreed. I just had to wait until their lordships were done."
     "So, you're the last?"
     "Of formal meetings, I believe so. I dare say there'll be other petitioners."
     "There always seem to be," I sighed.
     "Not surprising," she said. "Always people wanting to see what they've never seen before."
     I nodded and sipped, grimaced and gazed out at the night. "What about you," I asked. "A lot of people like you in Overburdened?"
     A pause. When I looked her ears had flicked back. "And what do you mean by that?" she asked.
     "I mean I haven't seen white fur like that before. And your eyes..."
     "What about them?" Her tail was lashing.
     "They're quite beautiful," I said.
     The tail froze. She was staring fixedly at me. Those quite beautiful eyes were as hard as ice.
     I looked around at the impassive Mediators almost lost in the gloom, then back at her. "I've said something wrong, haven't I."
     Chieth blinked, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. She looked at the Mediators. "Constables, is he often like this?"
     "Milady," Jenes'ahn said, "there are times he seems to know everything and nothing."
     "And he doesn't know this?"
     "Apparently not."
     "Know what?" I asked, wondering if this was going to be really bad news.
     Chieth sighed. "Ah Rihey, newborn cubs have blue eyes."
     "Oh?" I didn't really understand. I hadn't really had any experience with newborns.
     "Cubs have blue eyes, not adults," Chieth elaborated. "Not adults in court. Not adults in positions of responsibility. Not adults the Guilds and lords take seriously. Not adults who deal in the great merchant halls. Do you understand that?"
     Ah. An adult with newborn features. I didn't know they had prejudices like that. "I... think so. It doesn't mean the same to me."
     "A?" Her ears trembled and flicked back momentarily and then she took a breath, waved a shrug. "White fur and blue eyes. There are places where that's... favorable, but they aren't the places I want to be."
     "Yet here you are," I said, gestured at the doors and the glittering throng within. "And there seem to be a lot of important people."
     "Sent here because it's a long way from Overburdened. A good place to send an... embarrassment. Only no-one really thought something like this would happen here."
     "'this'?" I noted.
     "Well, you," she said. "Apparently you're important."
     "Ah, and all of a sudden you're the man on the spot. Person. Woman."
     "Hai? A, yes, a way of putting it," she said. "More messages from home in one month than I received the previous five years. Our Embassy wasn't extended an invitation, but they knew that as [something] I could ask. They asked me to do so."
     "A. That word again:[syhaik]. I don't know it."
     "No?" she cocked her head again. "It's an exchange between two parties, usually nations, to show goodwill. Something of value from each party to ensure... cooperation."
     "That's... collateral? a hostage?" I wasn't sure I'd translated correctly. "So if one party doesn't cooperate... what happens?"
     She chittered a laugh. "These days, not much. Long ago there were rather severe penalties, but now it's mostly a temporary arrangement to show good will."
     "Oh. And they chose you?"
     That tattooed ear flicked back as snow drifted down, flakes sticking to her fluffed out fur but not melting. "As I said, it's mostly a gesture," she said tautly. "And a useful excuse to get noisemakers and undesirables out from underfoot. A long way out from underfoot. They sent me here. I thought... I thought I still might be able to do something here... to facilitate trade negotiations, open new routes, deal with guilds and merchants. But I've found that being endlessly and uselessly shuffled from one meaningless societal gathering to another while people brush me off or laugh behind my back grows tiresome."
     She sniffed and waved a dismissive gesture. "However, there are some rules that go along with the position, and I can use those. I used them tonight."
     "And here you are."
     "And here I am," she agreed. "I was hoping you could help."
     "Really? Perhaps you overestimate my abilities. You think you've got problems," I said, sipping at my drink again. "Look at me."
     "Yes, but you've got..." she trailed off, perhaps not sure if that was the right track.
     "I've got things people want, a? You think they all like me because of that? Quite the opposite for a few of them, but they still come. Perhaps that's a life lesson: just make sure you've got what other people want and they will come to you."
     "But what have I got?" she asked.
     I shrugged. "I don't know. But neither do they. That's the point. Something I've been learning since coming here is that what's on the surface really does count. But people will look past that only if they want to. You have a few choices: do nothing and live up to their expectations; make them want to see past that surface; or maintain the appearance you want them to see so they don't even try to look past it. Right guys?" I looked at the Mediators. They didn't reply.
     "Interesting observation," she said. "Which choice have you made?"
     "That would be telling," I smiled.
     "That thing with your mouth... that is amusement?"
     "A smile," I said. "So, yes, amusement."
     "Oh."
     I looked around the terrace. There were other Rris nearby. Considering their excellent hearing I guessed they were in earshot. "Tell you what: I might be able to find some time for a formal meeting with you. Like I am with these others."
     Perhaps a few Rris nearby twitched at that, but she straightened. "I would be... most grateful, Ah Rihey. You would do that?"
     Another shrug. "What can I say? I've always had a weak spot for beautiful eyes." Her ears twitched back, then up again and she was searching my face, trying to read something. "Thank you, ah Rihey."
     "I'll tell my people to expect the request," I said. "Now, you are enjoying yourself?"
     "Here? Tonight?"
     "A. Tonight, and in Bluebetter in general."
     She jutted her chin and scratched under it with a delicate clawtip as she considered. "The city is interesting: more [something] than Broken Sun — people and goods of all kinds. All the commerce and ships back from over the oceans, from the east and the south. They have some incredible things: plants, animals, precious metals. You come from over there, don't you?"
     "No. Not quite."
     "But I saw things like you in his lordship's menagerie," she said. "Well, quite like you. But they can't talk. And they had more fur. Darker too. Also shorter..." she paused, reevaluating, perhaps considering she'd made a mistake. "Maybe only slightly like you."
     "Not my kind, I think," I said. "I'm not from anywhere around here. It's complicated. But I had heard about the menagerie. I should see if I can find time for a visit."
     "I would think it worthwhile. Also the conservatory — some strange plants there. And the shipyards, they are impressive. More boats than I'd thought existed before I came here."
     They were good suggestions. I smiled. "Thank you. I think I will have to try and find time."
     She ducked her head and glanced off to one side. I followed her gaze toward the doors where Chaeitch was strolling our way through the snow, smoking pipe in hand. Chieth stood up straight, smiled and said to me, "And I thank you for yours, and your generous offer. I do look forward to our next talk, ah Rihey."
     With that she turned and stalked off along the terrace, her pelt vanishing into the drifting snow. Chaeitch sauntered up, puffed on his pipe. "That was a local lord?"
     "Not quite," I said, not certain how to describe her. "Well, not local anyway. Was she the last for the night?"
     "That would seem to be the case."
     I looked up at the dark sky, feeling snow settling on my tingling cheeks and heaved a relieved breath. "What's the time anyway?"
     "I think... about two o'clock? You've had enough?"
     "A," I sighed, listening to my dogs barking. "Quite."
     "We can leave. Others already are and you have duties tomorrow... today. Unless you want another drink?"
     "I think I'm about done," I said and he chittered. We made our way back toward the brilliance and noise of the ballroom with my two guards close behind. I deposited my empty glass on a passing servant's tray. "Chaeitch, how do you feel about blue eyes?"
     "What? What do you mean?"
     "I mean Rris with blue eyes. Adults with blue eyes. How do you feel about them?"
     He considered, puffing sweet-smelling smoke. "I suppose I usually don't. I can't say I've met many? Why?"
     I laughed. "I think I just got played."

The palace was winding down after the busy night. Chaeitch bade me a cheery goodnight and headed for his own rooms. The guards waited outside until the whitelacquered door of my suite closed between us. Yeircaez greeted me in the lamp-lit antechamber with an unobtrusive little bow, inquiring if there was anything I required. I just asked for a glass of boiled water and he went to oblige.
     The suite was warm. Gas lamps burned on low, comfortable and soothing after the turmoil downstairs. Through in the bedroom I started to get myself out of the getup, until staff quietly appeared to assist. I almost shooed them away, but then gave in and allowed them to help in disassembling the costume, helping me out of the jacket and belt, taking the silly fake knife and scabbard, the waistcoat, and then the stiff tunic. I extricated my feet from the boots, which promptly vanished, followed by the trousers, leaving me in my breeches. They worked smoothly and quietly and unobtrusively and didn't stare, then took the soiled costume away to be dealt with. The last to leave placed a silver tray with a single glass of water on the dresser and then bowed and left me.
     It was cold and clean, already boiled, but still with a bit of a gritty residue. That was the least of what you might find in water here. I drank. Stretched. Jumped when something in the dimness in the corner of my vision moved, and then felt a little stupid. The mirror: a sheet of silver-backed glass in an adjustable frame, painted snow-white like the rest of the furniture.
     I walked over and stared back at myself.
     That was what Rris saw? Tall, hairless, strange-proportioned. I grimaced. Even to my eyes I was starting to look... out of place. That wasn't what I saw every day and now my mind was telling me that what was in front of it wasn't what should be there. The form was odd: muscles in odd places, hair and beard that only provided a superficial resemblance to Rris, a pale imitation of their features. On that hairless hide were reminders of bruises, a line of scar tissue on the ribs, another knotting of the skin on the right cheek, a white starbust just over the scapula and a matching one on the back. I rolled my shoulder — it wasn't exactly painful, but I could still feel it.
     That was what Rris saw. Even in a room of spectacular costumes I still stood out, and it wasn't about to change anytime soon. And in the cleaner air of my quarters I was increasingly aware I smelled of sweat, of overheated Rris, of smoke and wine and incense. "Shower," I told the stranger in the mirror and imagined it watching as I turned my back and walked away.
     A few minutes under the hot rain and my budding headache had eased. I closed my eyes, tipped my head up to the stream and just drifted away for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes Chihirae was standing quietly outside the stall and watching me curiously.
     "Are you all right?" she asked over the sush of falling water. She was still wearing that dress and jewelry, burning gold and red in the lamplight.
     "Damn, don't do that! Rot... I'm fine."
     "Sorry," she chittered. "You just looked strange."
     "Just tired. Long day. Busy day."
     "A," she said and looked around the bathroom, examining the stall. "I heard someone say you had rain in your bath," she said, seeming amused. "Now I see it's true. Not exactly like your one back home, a?"
     "Does the job," I said. "Want to join me? I'll do your back."
     "I'm sure you would," she retorted, tongue lolling. "I'm quite happy dry and warm, thank you."
     "Your loss," I shrugged and worked some of the porridge-like Rris soap into something resembling a lather. "You enjoy yourself tonight?" I asked over my shoulder.
     "A," she said and smiled. "Actually, I did. That was an enjoyable evening. Good food and drink. Interesting people. Interesting conversation. I talked with lords and ladies. Rot it, I talked with his highness."
     "He was polite with you."
     "Impeccably so," she said. "Asked if I was comfortable. Asked about my work, if I was happy. I didn't know he would be so pleasant."
     I smiled into the stream of water. Of course he would be. "He does know how to treat guests."
     "And I noticed you did very well," she said. "Nobody was shooting or shouting at you. Well, not much."
     "We do try," I said.
     Chihirae chittered a laugh again, watching me wash. "So, why do you dislike those affairs so much?"
     "Probably because I haven't had a very good run with them," I confessed. "That was one of the better ones. Also, for some reason, I do seem to stand out a bit."
     "Not in a bad way," she said, cocking her head.
     "Tonight did seem different. Perhaps others don't see things quite that way, but maybe things are changing. A bit. Most everyone tonight was civil." I turned my face up to the water again, rinsing off. More likely everyone had been warned or threatened to varying degrees. I didn't say that out loud.
     "A," I heard through the water noise. "Most polite. A lot of invitations to social engagements and galleries. Someone asked if I would be willing to tutor their children. Of course there were a lot of question about you."
     "They didn't press you, did they?"
     "No. They were, as you said, civil," she said. "Polite. Friendly. A bit drunk, some of them. Questions about rumors and things they'd heard: how I met you, are you as terrible as you look, did you really pull someone's head off, are you really from the future." The she cocked her head and laughed again. "Oh, and your reputation gets around."
     "What rep..." The horrible thought hit me. "Oh, carp. Not that one?"
     "A. 'that one'," she said, obviously amused. "Interesting questions such as how do I like sex with someone whose penis looks like some kind of toadstool?"
     "What?! That's... who... It doesn't!"
     "Not right now," she very pointedly looked down and grinned, hugely amused.
     I grimaced and shut the water off. The sudden silence in the tiled room was startling. Somewhere up in the ceiling pipes pinged and knocked. "How the hell do they know details like that anyway."
     "Good question," Chihirae said. "She knew a lot of details. Asked about new scars. Just how many sexual partners have you had, anyway?"
     "What?" I stopped sluicing myself off, dripping water and startled. "What did she know? Look, just who was this?"
     She considered and waved a shrug. "I don't exactly know. She wasn't introduced, just started talking to me. It was a noble lady. Very polite. Expensive clothes. She knew about you: your habits, things you say, your scars, sexual aspects, foods. And she asked about you. Not... the usual questions."
     "Then, what?"
     "Just... not the same things as others. They were more familiar questions: how you are doing, what happened to your finger, that sort of thing. I thought... they were perhaps like you might ask of an old acquaintance?"
     My left hand twitched involuntarily at the mention of my finger, but what she was saying was more disturbing. There were rumors floating around and some of those were quite explicit, if not entirely accurate. But someone knew details that terribly few knew... my two Mediators had interrupted a private moment and seen more than they should have. I'd slept with Lady H'risnth of Open Fields, but I was pretty sure she wasn't here and there were excellent reasons why she wouldn't talk. The only other possibility wasn't a possibility. She couldn't be. . .
     "You know her?" Chihirae asked. "Not the Lady from Open Fields? You said you had sex with her."
     I shook my head as I stepped out of the stall. Water dripped behind me as she handed me a towel. "I don't think she's here."
     "Oh," she said, picking up another towel and unfolding it. "The only other one was the doctor, wasn't it? That Maithris? The one who..." she trailed off, licked her lips and reassessed. "She was the other one?"
     "A," I nodded tensely, fearfully. "It can't have been her. It wasn't her, was it?"
     "She didn't look or act like a doctor. She acted like nobility." Chihirae patted my arm as she stepped behind me. The towel blotted at my back. "And she didn't look like the pictures you showed me of her in your book. She was older. She fit in."
     That sounded... reassuring. "Then perhaps those Mediators talked about that night they... misunderstood."
     "A," she mused. "They did get a good look. Or perhaps she'd just read a book about you."
     I tensed. "You don't think someone did write a..."
     "No!" she hastily added and chittered, the staccato noise skittering off the tiling. "No, I don't. I think if someone had, then everyone would have been asking the same questions. Huhn," she made an amused noise as she worked with the towel, "Although I think such a book would be remarkably popular."
     I smiled. "Perhaps I should write one first."
     A light slap on my back. "I think you might have to work on your lessons a little harder first," she said.
     "Or get a good teacher... ow!" that time the claws hadn't been retracted. "Apologies! Joke!"
     A growl rumbled behind me. "I could take one of those offers for a tutoring position."
     "You know they just want you for your mind."
     "Then what do you want me for, a?"
     "Well, you're pretty handy with a towel."
     Another slap. "That's all?" she growled.
     "Umm, I think so." I turned around before I could be on the receiving end of another slap and she stepped back, still holding the towel up between us, eyes glittering like molten gold. "Why? Is there something I missed?"
     Chihirae bared sharp little teeth at me, but the effect was lost by the chitter of laughter. She dabbed at my chest with the towel, "Then a towel is all you will get, hairless one."
     "But you do wear that attire very well," I said. "You impressed people tonight."
     "Huhn, you think so?" She looked pleased.
     "I think you looked spectacular."
     "I was worried it might've looked... strange," she said. "I thought people might laugh."
     "No-one was laughing," I assured her. "You did look beautiful. You probably started a new fad. You'll probably see copies of that everywhere."
     She smiled uncertainly, her ears twitching. "You think I was beautiful?"
     "Still are," I said, reaching up to stroked the fur of her neck, just above the necklace.
     She touched my hand, then the jewelry that hung there. "It wasn't just the gold and jewels?"
     "They're shiny rock and metal. Nothing. Worthless. You're what matters."
     "I'm not sure that's what they thought," she mused. "A good number commented on the gems."
     "Then they're fools who don't know what's important," I said.
     "You call the great lords and ladies fools?" she laughed.
     "A," I shrugged.
     "You don't think they got to where they are by not being fools?"
     "We could find out, a?"
     "Really?" She cocked her head. "How?"
     "You could take these off," I said, sliding a finger under the shoulder strap of her gown.
     "Then we'd see it's really you that matters, a?"
     "A?" she tipped her head the other way, pink tip of her tongue protruding ever so slightly. Her eyes didn't leave me as she reached up to unfasten this and that, shifted a bit and the dress slithered down to puddle on the tiles around her feet. "What do you think?" she asked, teasing.
     I gave her a good eyeballing, up and down and up again, making a show of it. She looked amused and then chirruped in surprise when I pulled her in close. Jewelry was cold against my bare skin and fur tickled as I held her, bent my cheek against hers. "Mikah... ?" she murmured.
     "I was right," I said. "They're fools."
     Chihirae chittered and tipped her head back to look up at me, cock her head. "Is this one of your convoluted ways of saying you want to have sex now?"
     I faltered, thrown off track. "I thought it was rather good."
     "Huhn, really? You go through that with your females?"
     And she wasn't. And I had been. It was one of those recorded behavioral grooves I kept dropping back into. They have seasons, sensitive noses, scents and pheromones. They didn't need to dance around to find if the other was interested. I tried to understand her expression, instinctively hunting for cues that weren't there. "You don't like it?"
     Amber eyes glimmered, flickered as she studied me. "I didn't say that."
     "Oh," I said. "I should stop?"
     "I didn't say that either," she said. A clawtip tickled across my skin, down my chest, feeling my heart lurch.
     "You're teasing me again," I realized.
     "Oh? As you fish for sex with flattery?"
     I blinked, a little taken aback. Was that an accusation? "Is that how you see it?"
     A chitter and a brief jab with a claw. "Mikah, that's how it is. I can smell it as well as see it. You could just ask."
     "That's a bit... uninteresting. Besides, fishing can be fun."
     "A? I think most fishermen consider it a task."
     "Really? Perhaps it depends upon what they're trying to catch."
     "And just what are you fishing for?" she flashed teeth and I understood she was playing. Matching my game.
     "Well, someone who might be able to help me answer a question that has been nibbling at me."
     Her ears twitched and her expression was amused smugness. "That would be?"
     "There's a bed in the next room."
     "Huhn, really?"
     "A. It's very big."
     "Oh?"
     "But I was wondering if it is big enough for two. Experiments might be necessary."
     "Huhn, fishing for knowledge," she growled and her hands wandered down, did some testing of their own. She looked down, tipped her head. Amused. "Well, I see you brought your rod with you. Perhaps I can assist."
     "I would be... grateful."
     "I'm sure you will. And in return you can assist me with my studies of toadstools, A?"
     I winced. "You're not going to let me forget that, are you."

Morning got a touch hectic.
     Staff were in there early. Voices woke me. Chambermaids were urgently conferring with Yeircaez, gesturing at the bed. He glanced my way and hurriedly shooed them away, then gave a quick bow and backed out. I looked at the furry lump curled up beside me, snoring away like a misfiring two-stroke and shook my head. If those staff were indiscreet there'd be enough fuel from that to keep the gossip fires raging for days.
     I reluctantly extricated myself from the tangle of warm sheets without disturbing her and made for the shower. She was still noisily unconscious when I returned, got dressed, and went for breakfast. I envied her: it was still dark and cold outside and a couple more hours in a warm bed would've been bliss.
     Breakfast was good. Our cook knew what I liked and had become quite adept at preparing it. There was some medium-rare buffalo steak strips, fish, eggs, fritters, potato pancakes, vegetables, fruit and baked goods. Despite the early hour there was a full provision of drinks: wines, brandies, whiskeys, and ales, as well as milk and tomato juice. That was amazingly fresh.
     As others arrived I was standing at the window watching the sky brightening in the east and polishing off a fresh-baked breakfast roll. I heard Chaeitch and Rraerch chattering away in the hall before they and Hedia wandered in. Rohinia was looking as implacable as ever and Jenes'ahn didn't seem to be with them. Hedia offered a bow. "I hope last night was enjoyable."
     I felt my face freeze before I realized. Oh, she meant the party. "I... yeah. Yes. For the most part it was."
     "Apologies are extended for those who offended you," she said. "They were out of place. That has been made clear to them."
     I shrugged. "I'm used to it," I said and waved at the spread on the trolley. "Help yourself to something. It's a shame to waste it."
     Chaeitch didn't need urging. Two strips of smoked fish were gone before I could blink and he was happily champing away.
     "Skipped breakfast?" I asked.
     "Not at all," he said, still chewing.
     "You're going to end up looking like Kh'hitch," I said.
     "I think I'll risk it," he said, making another handful vanish.
     "Now, sir, if it pleases you, here is your schedule for today," Hedia said as she opened a folio.
     The schedule proved to be a busy one. Travel distance here tended to be measured in days, the time it took to travel that distance, not actual distance itself. What would've been a quick jaunt in a vehicle back home took on different proportions here. Even just going ten kilometers meant that at least an hour had to be allocated just to get there. Back again was another hour gone. And that wasn't including all the logistics of maneuvering carriages and their escorts through a busy city. So the day's outing was meticulously planned to do as much as possible in one area.
     The schedule that morning was for Chaeitch, Rraerch, and I to visit government shipyards and workshops and talk with various industry movers and shakers. The Mediators would be in attendance, of course. The yards were in the northwest of the city, very near where we'd landed. It was only a couple of kilometers away, but our hosts were trying to make every minute count.
     The sun rose into a clear sky that morning, but the early air was bitterly cold. We had an oversized escort comprising of alert Land of Water troops and a much larger number of Bluebetter guards. They stayed close and alert, obviously desperate to ensure an incident like that on the first night didn't happen again. I watched the city waking as the carriages rolled through the streets.
     Red Leaves was one of the old cities. Its history wasn't uncommon: it'd started as a small settlement and spread. The center of the old city had taken root on the eastern shores far up in the upper reaches of the upper Chesapeake Bay... Devouring Water Bay, situated amongst small fresh-water rivers and creeks that flowed down to the estuary. The topology of the land and bay differed here — the coastline twisted differently and rivers had cut other routes — but the old city was situated approximately a bit to the north of where the Chesapeake Canal existed back home. There the city had grown, nestled within walls which'd been built out and out as required for hundreds upon hundreds of years.
     Times had changed. The city kept growing. Bigger than the now-obsolete walls could contain. Docks and industry had demanded more and more room, pushing the center eastwards. Then it'd continued to expand, requiring more of everything: more farms, industry, resources, more space. Red Leaves kept spreading east, sending out tendrils to small fishing settlements on the Delaware River. With the cheaper land a handy distance from the capital city and growing river trade from the interior they expanded explosively. Industry had spread over there, with newer factories. Commercial shipyards beside the government ones had started there, using new ideas and techniques. So now while the heart of Red Leaves was a dense handful of kilometers of city walls, old stone buildings, and slate tiled roofs along the Devouring Water Bay, its outlying regions with housing, industry, estates, parks, farms, and commerce spanned the neck of the peninsula, from bay to bay.
     Across the city trickles of smoke rose from chimneys that'd been old when the US was still a gaggle of nervous settlers landing on an unknown beach. The scents of cooking food drifted from local bakeries and cookeries. Early markets were already busy in squares along the way. Rris bustled and hustled between stalls decked with bright awnings and bunting. Food was cooking on open grills. Cattle and riding animals milled in their pens. Merchants shouted over one another to announce whatever it was they were selling: the choicest cuts, the best bolts of cloth, the hottest pies, the sharpest knives, the finest jewelry, the soundest pots and pans. No time to stop and see if they really were.
     "Now, Mikah," Rraerch reminded me. "Note that this is an initial meeting. Nothing will be settled here. They will want to see what we can offer them, and we will try and find out what they want. There's no definite spoor at the moment, just listen and see what they say."
     "And if they ask me directly? What can I tell them?"
     "Preferably as little as possible," she said. "Don't lie, but keep things vague. Don't give away anything that we might be able to sell. Of course, our primary interests are in pushing the standards issue, and any information that puts that in a good light is welcome. The same with the rail line: we are looking to use that to draw them into ratifying standards and again, support from you emphasizing that this endeavor would require agreed-upon templates would assist in that."
     "You should know," Chaeitch added from where he was seated, a cloth-wrapped parcel on his lap. "Ah Yaershish will most likely be present. You met him last night."
     "I remember."
     "He's a good man, but he's still... competitive. He will do what he can to get what he wants. And he's no stone-wit either: he knows politics and he knows his business." "Better than you?"
     He weighed that question for a few seconds. "In engineering: no. In politics: probably. He enjoys that side of it. He is personable and has friends on sunny rocks. This is an exploratory talk. We're just scenting the air here, but know that he can get a lot out of anything you say. Any stray talk about mining, machinery, production techniques... he can probably glean some ideas from it. So..."
     "So think before I say. Got it."
     He flicked his ear and winced.
     The shipyards and their buildings crowded in behind high walls. New brick buildings abutted older wood and stone ones. There were timber yards, tool shops, smoking and drying stores, tar stores, sheet metal works, warehouses, and workshops. A bustling three-story brick ropery stretched more than the length of the yards, one of its walls and outer wall of the yards. Down on the waterfront were moored ships of all shapes and sizes, from small sloops to three masters that looked remarkably like the old pirate ships from history books. More were hauled up in slipways or nestled in dry docks of various sizes. Those were in various states of repair, from having copper sheathing applied to the hull to missing sections of planking. One vessel down the end was pocked and splintered with what looked suspiciously like cannon ball damage.
     The yard was used by the Bluebetter government. The Pigeon had been built there, was in fact being overhauled in one of the berths. It was owned by the government, but had an arrangement similar to the yards in Shattered Water wherein work was carried out by Smither Industries — their version of military contractors. Although of course there were differences: the contractors here were dependent on the Guilds. And with the Guilds, you dealt with them or nobody. If you wanted metal bent, you dealt with metalworkers. A ship built: the shipwrights. Sails: that was the textiles guild. They had the people and the skills and the knowledge and they kept a tight grip on all of it.
     Which of course caused all sorts of headaches. Try building something as advanced as a steamship — you're not going to be able to do it alone. You've got the wooden bits: the framework, the hull and superstructure, all requiring solid, durable timber. You've got the metal parts which range from finely-milled high-grade steel to cast iron. It requires a huge range of skills. And, of course, the guilds tightly control those skills. You don't do guild work in a guild-controlled town without say-so from the local hall.
     The shipyard administration buildings had been something grander once. There were still marks on the stonework where ornate cornices and shutters and downspouts had been attached before someone found a more lucrative use for them. Now it was simply functional, the frivolities trimmed back and newer expansions constructed far more economically, resulting in a hodgepodge of styles tacked together. I looked up at grimy little windows and bricks streaked with soot, hitched my heavy coat up and followed our guides.
     A mixed assortment of a dozen Rris greeted us in a dusty and echoing foyer. Hedia hurried through the introductions. Foremost was Ah Yaershish, who I remembered from the previous evening. Accompanying him were government representatives, managers who operated the shipyard as well as a couple of haughty-looking naval types. There were guild people, some of whom I'd met at the ball. Others were lower ranking, but still involved. Their attitudes seemed to be everything from curious to skittish, with uncertain glances flickering from me to their superiors.
     Those introductions went by in a barrage of alien names. A couple stuck; Rris I'd met before. Then the entire group was escorted upstairs to offices with once-lush rugs, dinged wainscoting, streaked windows, worn-but-comfortable cushions with small side-tables, and heating. Thank god. We sat and the Rris stared at me. Then it was down to business.
     There was the initial to-ing and fro-ing as both sides felt out the other's position. Each side said a fair bit without actually saying much at all.
     Nothing I hadn't done before. And I needed that run up — it let me get a feel for the atmosphere, which didn't come as easily for me as it did for the others. Still, that could work both ways.
     There was skepticism, especially from the military types. Like military types everywhere they'd gotten comfortable, entirely prepared to fight the last war again and leery of anything that might drop some reality into the fantasies they'd created around their capabilities. Now especially. They had some new toys they thought were the newest and bestest evar. I couldn't really just up and tell them they were already obsolete.
     Eventually they stopped spinning their wheels and started to move ahead.
     "Now, the initial documents we received indicated you have a proposal," a Bluebetter government staffer acting as an informal spokesperson said to Rraerch.
     "Of a sort," she said.
     "They were not specific. They did mention an initiative Land of Water was behind. Future developments would hinge upon this initiative being followed."
     "A somewhat open interpretation," Rraerch said. "But generally correct."
     "So we are given to understand that unless we support Land of Water on this unspecified endeavor, you will withhold this prospective resource from us in the future." Ears went down.
     "Not exactly the wording," she said calmly. "The fact is, if you don't then any future undertakings would be... difficult for technical reasons. I should let ah Ties explain further."
     "Please, do," one of the Bluebetter Rris said. Their eyes were black and ears were vibrating as they kept them up through force of will.
     Chaeitch ignored that and laid his package down on his side-table. Unfolded the wraps. It was a simple, oblong wooden box. Nicely polished walnut with brass fittings. He opened it and turned it around so others could see. Inside, nestled in red fabric, were little silver cylinders of varying sizes, from smaller than my pinky to fist-sized.
     A pause. "Weights?" Ah Yaershish ventured after a few seconds.
     "A," Chaeitch said. "Part of a [something] system of measurement which Land of Water has intentions of adopting."
     "Those have been tried before."
     "A. Usually with arbitrary basis for the measurements: someone's stride or arm length, distance between two points, a volume of quicksilver, so forth."
     "You are using?"
     "Based on the weight of a volume of purified water at sea level."
     Ah Yaershish considered. Then he said, "Interesting. Plausible."
     Another Bluebetter, one of the officials, leaned forward. "And is there a good reason why we should do this?"
     "Quite a few," Chaeitch said, settling back on his cushion. "The vessel we arrived on was very impressive. Some wonderful workmanship and innovations there. Also, most complex. I would say it was carrying quite a few spare parts?"
     "You could," Ah Yaershish conceded.
     "And all those parts are unique. They only fit that vessel. Some parts only fit specific areas: special bolts for pipes and boilers, rods for linkages... they all have to be milled and sized perfectly."
     Yaershish gesture affirmative.
     "That's not going to work," Chaeitch said bluntly. "What do you do when you have a dozen similar vessels yet each requires their own parts? When you have engines that are more complex than those you currently have breaking down in a remote port and no local parts fit? This system of everyone playing with what they're comfortable with has to end. Land-of-Water will be adopting this and gradually shifting all our new machinery to the new standard so it's not as if you would be doing something we aren't."
     "And the more lands adopt this system the more likely others are to follow suit."
     ".A."
     One of the officials looked at me. "This was your... advisor's doing?"
     "No," I said. "The idea was taken from the way my kind do things, but the initiative was all theirs. I do support the move, though. It's sensible and necessary. What you want to do will probably be impossible without such a system."
     "And you know what we want to do?" the Rris asked levelly.
     I took a close look at the asker and saw the black eyes, the tension in the angle of the ears. It was a loaded, hostile question. I sighed.
     "You are probably working on a larger version of the Pigeon. I'd say a deep-water version, with a deeper keel, larger bunkers. Possibly with masts for sails as well, a? You are having trouble though: the paddle wheels don't work so well in rough seas. One side bites, and then the other. A? And there are issues with quality on seams. And there are difficulties with metal supply, both quantity and quality. And then there's the amount of fuel required... More fuel requires a larger vessel to carry it, which requires more fuel, which requires a larger vessel and so on."
     The Bluebetter Rris hesitated, looked at Yaershish again.
     "Quite close," he said. "Surprisingly so."
     "So you know this type of vessel?" the official asked me.
     "Not exactly like this," I said, quite honestly. "I'm familiar with parts of it."
     "From Land of Water?"
     "A. And from where I come from."
     "Your kind has such?"
     I blinked. Hadn't she been briefed? Perhaps she had and simply didn't take it in or didn't believe. That wasn't unusual. "Had," I said. "A long time ago."
     "'Had?'"
     "They are... old. Not used any longer."
     Her tail lashed and I saw others looking irritated. "So you consider this old? Simple?"
     Uh-oh. "Not simple. I couldn't make one. I consider it different. I know our ship builders use other techniques."
     "Such as?"
     I glanced at Rohinia. "We don't do so much work with wood."
     "Then what? Metal?"
     "A," Chaeitch stepped in. "Steel, mostly. For their larger ones, a category for which the Pigeon would scarcely qualify. They have civilian passenger ships over three hundred meters long. Over sixty-thousand tons."
     Tails lashed. "Preposterous! It would collapse under its own weight! And where could you get that sort of material? The time it would take foundries to produce it would..."
     "That's what he's here to tell us," Yaershish put in calmly.
     I waited for them to finish before I continued. "Where we get that sort of material is from all over the continent. From all over the world, in fact. It's not economical for one entity to invest in all the required industry, so various organizations specialize. They trade amongst themselves for items others produce. And they need to be working from the same measurements: Material weights have to be accurate and consistent. Machines require identical spare parts. Instructions have to make sense to people in different places. You cannot do this without working with the same measurements."
     "We have managed so far," one of them said.
     I nodded. "A. So did we," I said. "Until things started getting more complex. More things to go wrong. There's nothing like seeing a ship break in two as it comes off the slipway because someone made a mistake converting figures."
     "That has happened?"
     "A. And a while back a very expensive piece of machinery failed quite spectacularly because of errors converting from one measuring system to another."
     "What sort of machine?"
     "A machine sent to explore the forth planet."
     There was silence. Ears twitched. Rris looked from one to another. Eventually one ventured, "Was that a joke?"
     "Not to the countries that collaborated. Enormous amounts of time and money spent to scatter little bits of metal over another planet. They weren't laughing."
     "No," the Rris elaborated. "I mean you really sent a machine to another world?"
     "A. And that was a wonderful example of what can happen when you mix different systems: a simple mistake"
     They were staring. Eventually one of them coughed. "You... use an example of machines being sent to another planet as a warning about checking sums?"
     Shit. I grimaced and looked to Chaeitch and Rraerch. He simply waved a shrug — he was used to me doing things like that. I turned back to my audience. "Apologies," I said. "That was a... poorly-chosen example. The machine is really not the point. Even if I told you all about it you couldn't build one because you don't have the machines to make the machine to make the machines... and so on. But more importantly, you couldn't build one because you don't have a... a standard system. Every workshop that produced a part would be producing something a little bit different: slightly longer, or wider, or a screw thread at the wrong angle. Do you understand? It's not a convenience; it's a solid foundation to build on. It's necessary."
     The Bluebetter Rris sat there and stared back. Their expressions were... difficult for me to read. I know I saw anger and annoyance there, also I thought I recognized consideration, surprised thoughtfulness, appraisal.
     "And this is what you offer us?" one of them said. "This creature," a hand gestured at me, "talks of other worlds. You offer us numbers? You are aware we already have such systems, and they have served us well. To change them would be a certain and enormous expense, for what? An opportunity to join Land-of-Water in this... this scheme?"
     Not an unexpected response.
     "A," Rraerch said mildly. "There is that. But in joining us in that scheme, there would be the opportunity to join us in other schemes. And these schemes would involve details such as improved mining and smelting techniques. New construction techniques. New engines and power sources, five times the efficiency of the ones used in Pigeon.
     "And of course you are concerned about cost. If you talk to your accountants they'll happily tell you about the amounts you're currently losing in tariff miscalculations and graft, in the costs of redundant parts, in parts that don't fit or have to be remade because of confusions in manufacturing. You are currently losing far more than this will ever cost you. We know, because so are we."
     The silence this time was a little more thoughtful. Bluebetter Rris exchanged looks.
     "This is your proposal?" one of them asked me.
     I carefully gestured a no. "Ah Ties' idea. He started it and did most of the work. I just did details."
     "And what of these other schemes?" another mused.
     "There was a proposal we had in mind," Rraerch said. "However, it would be... highly dependent upon your reaction to this standard."
     "Might we enquire what it would be?" another asked. "You mentioned costs, and we can be sure that adopting such a standard and enticing industry to also adopt it would incur quite significant costs. Anything that might offset that would be regarded with interest."
     Rraerch looked to Chaeitch. He seemed to consider for a few seconds before slowly waving agreement. I tried not to grin at the showboating.
     "All right," Rraerch said. "We had considered a rail line. From Shattered Water to Bluebetter."
     They didn't exactly freeze, they just didn't react for a few seconds. Just sat and stared. Then one of them ventured, "You are aware that there are over six hundred kilometers between us?"
     "Is it?" I said to Chaeitch. "Didn't feel like more than five-and-a-half hundred."
     He snorted.
     "And," the Bluebetter official continued, "there are the swamps. Then the Flood plains. Then you get into the Rippled Lands. There are mountains and rivers, all requiring bridging or tunnels."
     "And just the amount of steel required would be... ridiculous," another added. Yaeshsish kept his trap shut.
     "So you might need some new smelting and construction techniques, a?" I asked. "Also engineering and manufacturing."
     Another hesitation. But there were some light bulbs going on.
     "It's not an undertaking one country can do alone," Rraerch said. "Likewise, it's not an undertaking that can be done when different countries can't talk properly to one another. At the moment our bolts won't fit your machines. Our axles are different sizes. Our pipes and nails and screws... all different. We need to change that. Not just Bluebetter, Land-of-Water would have similar expenses.
     "You are asking, would a rail line be worth it? Perhaps Mikah can elaborate."
     Now they wanted me to talk. "Okay, it took us four weeks to get here. A very interesting four weeks. Where I come from that journey would have taken a few hours. A train here would not be that fast, not the first ones, but it could certainly do the journey in a couple of days. And carry hundreds of tons of cargo and passengers while doing it. And that would be just one train.
     "And of course there are the skills and machines needed to build it. You would need new mining and smelting techniques. Then new machines for building tools and equipment. New methods for making bridges and tunnels. Black powder works, but there are better explosives. Then you get new designs for engines and trains: stronger and more powerful boilers, gearing systems, safety and brakes.
     "Now, you have considerable interest invested in shipping, a?"
     Some Bluebetter hands indicated 'yes'.
     "Some of that new information will translate very well to your ships. But it also means that shipping becomes even more valuable. Rail is excellent for moving goods over land, but ships are still the most efficient way of moving large amounts of cargo between coastal areas. You might want to think about what you can do when you can bring large amounts of cargo from inland to the ports and when your ships at those ports have large holds and good engines."
     The Bluebetter Rris looked at one another. I saw tails and ears flicking, muzzles twitching, but otherwise the body language was... opaque.
     "Is his lordship aware of this... proposition?" one of them finally ventured. "The Guild?"
     "The Guild knows and offers conditional approval. We thought it best that his lordship's advisors have time to chew the offer over first," Rraerch said. "I think you'll find, as we did, that it is an excellent offer, most advantageous for all parties. Your recommendations would put some weight behind the offer."
     "Huhn," one of them coughed. "I think you put too much estimation behind our influence."
     "It's probably greater than ours," Rraerch replied.
     Ears flicked. Ah Yaershish leaned forward. "It is an interesting proposal with considerable merit. When were you planning to bring it to his lordship's attention?"
     "We have a more personal dinner engagement with him tonight," Rraerch said. "We will have some time to discuss business affairs, so that should be an ideal time. A written prospectus with more details will be provided."
     "And will give us time to evaluate," Yaershish mused. "Which is appreciated."
     Rraerch and Chaeitch inclined their heads.
     "Following on from that, there are certain areas we would ask you to consider..."
     From there the discussion turned to what Bluebetter would be interested in getting from such a deal. Just things they had a passing interest in, of course. Not all of that information would be entirely accurate — there was no way they would admit to items they were very interested in. I'd seen ears prick up when I mentioned new engines, but according to their interests those were of 'marginal interest'.
     Then came a tour of the shipyards. Well, most of them — there were a couple of large, closed sheds at one end of the yards that weren't mentioned by either party. What we did see was interesting, although nothing I hadn't seen before: workshops full of sawdust and tailings where belt-driven machines thumped away and shouting Rris handled huge lumps of timber slung from block and tackles; hot steaming rooms where ships spars and ribs were being bent into shape; store rooms of wood and metal and hemp; rooms where sails were sewn; stupidly long rooms like three bowling alleys stuck end-to-end where ropes were braided. There were the dry docks where three larger ships were in for maintenance and refitting over winter.
     My practical knowledge of ships is up there with my practical knowledge of Tuvan throat singing — not that great. I could see the obvious: that the winter-dusted vessels on braces in the docks were three masters, all of them with a truncated variant of lateen-rigging. There were cabins in the raised rear deck and the sterns were square. To my eye they were warped versions of the classic pirate ship, only no ship on the big screen ever appeared so small.
     The snow-and-ice draped ships were larger than any Rris vessels I'd seen. That wasn't surprising — these were intended for the open ocean, but still, none of them were more than a third the length of a football field and couldn't have weighed over five hundred tons. Rris sailed across the Atlantic in those? Considering they weren't water-lovers, that took some guts.
     The work being done on them was maintenance that could be performed during winter. One vessel was half-way through having its hull plated with copper, an activity which seemed to be on hold. The others were having hulls scraped and interior work done: bulkheads, flooring, and ladders repaired, glass reset, metalwork cleaned up... work that could be done out of the elements where metal contracted in the cold.
     I looked at those ships. They'd be claustrophobic by Rris standard. I would probably have to crawl below decks. Normally the next step in their evolution would be something like the East India Company's Indiaman ships: similar lines, only larger. Or perhaps the clipper class: faster, but with less cargo capacity. I would put money that Bluebetter was jumping these and trying to go to powered craft. Those sheds down the end of the yard probably contained what they considered the next word in ocean-going capability.
     So my off-handed remarks about ships back home probably put egg on a few folks' faces.
     From the shipyards we skipped across the way to an ironworks crammed in between warehouses. From behind brick walls its tall chimneys spilled ash and soot across the snowcovered rooftops and streets all around, so we arrived walking through ankle-high grey slush. The work's primary duties were manufacturing cast-iron items for the shipyards, everything from fittings and nails to chains and cannon. Those tasks it could handle, but the newer ships with their requirements of boilers and plumbing and metal plating demanded more of everything. The place was too small, too inefficient to keep up.
     The foundry's furnaces were a row of four two-story tall blocks of soot-blackened brick set into an exterior wall of the main factory floor. Outside, workers were stoking coke fuel from a continual procession of carts into the engines at the bases of the furnaces. On catwalks higher up, measured loads of iron ore and limestone were being dumped into the intakes. Meantime, inside the main hall it was dirty and dim and lit by the red glare of fire and molten iron. The air reeked of smoke and coal dust and animals and the sinus-tickling insinuation of molten metal. We were shown along the outlets of the blast furnaces where leather-protected and water-drenched Rris workers hauled crucibles of molten metal from the hell-hot mouths and carried them to be poured into forms of wet sand. A quick angry gout of steam and sparks and a brace of cast-iron braces were cooling off.
     And that was just for producing iron goods. If you wanted to get fancy and make steel, that required a long, time-consuming, and inefficient process of hammering carbon back into wrought iron.
     Yeah, it was pretty crude stuff. Land of Water's new foundries were a lot more efficient, but also not so easy to copy. They may have seemed simple on the surface with new forms for the chimneys, anthracite coal as a fuel, pre heaters for air intakes, and Bessemer converters for purification, but if you got something wrong — perhaps you didn't know about the gas control systems in the furnace or how to make the special refractory tiles lining them then interesting things happened. The interesting thing in that case could be an earthshattering kaboom.
     I wondered if they'd tried it. I hope nobody got hurt.
     How to improve on that industry? For one thing, move it out of the city. Get it out into the fringes and industrial areas where you could build a proper factory and clean up the city air while you're about it. Build it big, anticipate growth. Improved blast-furnaces, reheaters and Bessemer-style converters — similar to Land-of-Water's expansion — means increased production, which requires better mills and metal works.
     But if the works are out there on the outskirts and the shipyards are here and your other operations are further afield, then how do you get the goods from one place to another? The amount of ore and fuel required and the mass of the finished products made wagons impractical.
     Perhaps something like a railway?
     I think the Bluebetters were starting to see the possibilities.

Our third stop off that day was later that afternoon, on the return leg of the journey. It was another ironworks, but this place was mass producing cast-iron goods: pots and pans and skillets and kettles and stoves and irons and scales... all sorts of everyday items. Well, I assumed they were just everyday items until Rraerch murmured to me that they had military contracts as well. Lighter pots and so forth would go down very well amongst quartermasters.
     We toured around their factory floor, which was quite similar to the previous yard: dark and dirty and full of the stink of molten metal and the bustle of industry. Offhand, I could see a dozen ways efficiency could be improved, starting with not using cast iron for pots. While a good iron skillet certainly had its place, once a good steel mill was set up then you could stamp cheap pots and pans out by the thousands.
     Which would mean retooling costs, retraining staff, increased costs for raw materials, and a possible reduction in profits once the local market was saturated. So, ideally, you'd want a way to efficiently ship goods further afield and open new markets. Those were observations I kept behind my teeth as we walked and examined glowing crucibles and the rough products that emerged from the molds and the final products as they were filed down and polished with lamp-black. A basic iron skillet could cost an average worker months of salary. Admittedly, back home a good one wasn't cheap either.
     At the end of the tour the anxious plant managers gifted me with a small statue they'd produced. It was a figurine, about a hand-span high and very elegantly sculpted and rendered in black cast iron on an amber base. Appropriately enough, it was of a Rris blacksmith working at an anvil. You could make out every strap and wrinkle on the apron, every taut muscle in the arm raising the hammer. There was a lot of skill and beauty and care in that. Far more than tin pots and pans would ever warrant.
     Last light was fading as our convoy of coaches and troops returned to the palace. Drab leaden clouds hid the sky so the sunset was little more than a ruddy glow that faded in the west. By the time we got back it was dark. Our escorts lit lamps to walk back through the halls. They didn't need them, but I did. I'd have to remember to take my flashlight the next time.
     Yeircaez was waiting for us at the door to our annex. He bowed politely and enquired after the success of our day and gently reminded us that his lordship would be dining in two hours. We were all invited to join him. The teacher and the University representative had already been told and there'd be time to make ourselves presentable.
     I would've liked some time to relax, to unwind, to wash the foundry stink off me, but the day's debriefing came first.
     I invited Chaeitch and Rraerch in. Rohinia just unobtrusively insinuated himself, lurking in the background we headed through to the lounge. The two settled themselves on the cushions at the low table with relieved sighs while the Mediator just leaned against the wall. I raided the drinks cabinet.
     "Drinks?" I asked.
     "Water," Chaeitch said. "There will be wine with his lordship."
     Not a bad suggestion. I took a bottle and three, then four glasses.
     "What did you think?" Chaeitch asked me as I returned to the table. The glassware chimed against the rough stone surface as I set it down and he leaned forward slightly, catching my eye as he flicked an ear. I nodded. That someone might be listening wasn't surprising.
     "About today?" I said as I un-stoppered the bottle and poured. "I think it felt familiar. And I think they will have to look at moving their industry. Trying to cram it into a city without room to expand..." I shook my head. "You can tell better than I: How did they take the idea of a rail line?"
     Rraerch picked up a glass with one hand, waggled the other. "I think they will consider it."
     "A," Chaeitch said. "It would be sensible to accept it. It's a good deal. For everyone involved. But..." he trailed off and picked up his glass.
     "But, why take what you're given when you can ask for more?" Rraerch finished up. "We have allowed for that. There's the material that Chaeitch has provided. But, they will press for whatever else they can get."
     I shrugged and sipped. "Not that that'd do much good. They can't just drop new tools into those places and expect results. Hell, you found that out. They end up needing more of everything: raw materials, fuel, workers... if they can't get those goods to where they're needed, they might as well not have bothered."
     "Perhaps they'll consider that," Chaeitch said and then glanced over his shoulder. "And how does the Guild feel about today?"
     Rohinia flicked an ear. "It all went well enough. All the terms seem acceptable. Mikah seemed to know when to keep his comments to himself. And there were no casualties."
     "Question," I said, raising a finger. "What about the people who were watching us? There were people on the streets outside each place today, and it did look like there were a lot of the same people at each stop."
     "The Guild had watchers out," Rohinia said. "And I would say that half the people out there today would have been employed by various factions to keep an eye on proceedings. The other half would be trying to see what was so interesting."
     "And of course there would be the spies in the factories," Chaeitch said.
     "Land-of-Water?" I asked.
     He waved a shrug. "They wouldn't tell me if there were. But at least one from most of the other kingdoms wouldn't be surprising."
     I pictured entire industries run by spies from competing countries. It seemed a stupid waste of effort. But then, for a long time the R&D policies of companies back home had been 'steal what our competitors come up with and do it better and cheaper'. Which explained a lot, really.
     There was a bit more talking. The day had gone well, was the general consensus. It remained up to our hosts to accept or decline our offers and that would set the tone for the rest of the trip. I guess then the thought of what would happen if they declined the offers started to percolate and both Chaeitch and Rraerch sobered.
     That business concluded, they excused themselves to get cleaned up before the evening festivities. They strongly suggested I do the same before showing themselves out.
     Rohinia lingered. "Jenes'ahn will escort you tonight. If you can behave as you have today, you will make her quite happy."
     "You know I live for that," I told him.
     He exhaled a chuff of air and stalked out.

The shower drained black when I stepped beneath the torrent. I scrubbed soot from my hair. Snorted black gunk. That was only from a few hours in those places. Rris worked in there all day long, what did it do to them? I could make a fuss about it, but would they care? Try telling a mid-twentieth-century executive that their cigarettes were killing people? Impossible! They're making too much money to be dangerous.
     I scrubbed, rinsed, wandered through to the bedroom as I toweled off. Clothes that were considered appropriate for the evening had been neatly laid out on the bed: heavy cream pants that tucked into my boots, an embroidered olive-green shirt with frilly stuff at the collar, and a heavier dress coat, also of light cream and lined with green satin.
     "They are acceptable?" Chihirae strolled in, fiddling with her little grooming kit. "I thought you might need something warm. I don't know if they'll remember you don't like the cold."
     "Thanks," I told her. She was wearing lightweight grey breeches and a tan tunic embroidered with red and gold around the short sleeves and neckline. Around her neck hung the necklace I'd given her, the gold simmering behind the subdued attire. Her fur gleamed with the luster that a good brushing brought out. "You look good."
     "A," she preened. "That groom does good work."
     "Good enough for a king, a?"
     "A. Wait until you see Makepeace. She looks like a different person."
     "Oh, how she's doing?"
     "Apprehensive. She's worried she's going to make a fool of herself. I told her not to worry — everyone will be looking at you making a fool of yourself."
     "Glad I can be of assistance," I said.
     Chihirae chittered. "Now, you might need some to get that haystack of yours into shape in time."
     With her assistance I got myself armored in my finery; raked my hair into a state that might be acceptable at a king's table. We were done just in time for the dinner call.
     We met at the official border — the door to the guest annex. Hedia was waiting there, where the others gathered. Chaeitch and Rraerch were dressed well, but not over-the-top. Nothing like the reception the other night. Jenes'ahn in her Mediator garb. Clean, but no concessions to elegance or style whatsoever and wearing her new angry scars like medals. Makepeace... the scruffy little student I'd seen just the other day was gleaming in an orange kilt embroidered with gold and a vest of white wool and lace. Her pelt was flawlessly brushed and trimmed, but she still kept smoothing forearm fur down with quick little strokes and her eyes were wide, black and nervous. Chihirae murmured something to her and Makepeace glanced at me, gave a quick chitter.
     Discreet guards shadowed us as Hedia led. The palace was a huge place — so big that it was all too easy to imagine an ambush in one of the long halls where a few glimmering lights only made the shadows deeper. But the others didn't seem to have any concerns. Chaeitch and Chihirae chatted cheerfully about their days while Rraerch was asking Hedia some quiet questions. When you think about it, how much of a place like that can one person occupy? I wondered if there was a corner of habitable rooms where the Rris king lived while the rest of the place was more of a museum.
     It wasn't too far. Very close to where I'd had that private meeting with his lordship. We were ushered into a wood-paneled room with a ceiling that was more wooden panels carved into interlocking, star-shaped recesses, each with a small golden Rris face in their center. Purple drapes were drawn. Oil lamps, the new ones, burned everywhere, providing adequate light. My jacket was probably unnecessary: the air was warm and smelled of wood and beeswax, oils, dried flowers, and cooking food. The centerpiece was a long, low table of a deep and glossy and expensive blue on a rug patterned in multicolored, geometric intricacies.
     Seating was prearranged. They sat me at one end. Chihirae, Makepeace, and Jenes'ahn on one side; Chaeitch and Rraerch on the other. Servants ghosted around on quiet feet, kneeling to pour drinks and place appetizers: sweetbreads, grilled cubes of meat, strips of salmon, bowls of dipping sauces that they delicately informed me were supposed to be safe. The dinnerware was elegant, but not ostentatious: silver and china.
     We made small talk and grazed. Of course we waited for a while. Not long, just long enough to get comfortable before the Bluebetter king strolled in. A couple of guards took unobtrusive stations in the background while he settled himself, greeted us.
     No, they aren't a gregarious people. Their meals aren't used as excuses for social and familial rituals, but they can be useful when people have to get together to talk. Two birds with one stone sort of thing.
     "Everything today was arranged to your satisfaction?" Chita ah Thes'ita asked Rraerch.
     "A. Very much so," she said. "No problems. No delays. Very acceptable."
     "And you were able to see what you needed to? It was what you expected?"
     "In most regards it was," she replied. "Ah Ties did remark it seemed quite familiar. Very similar to the works we've recently updated. We are certain we can offer some useful suggestions."
     "That is good to hear," he smiled — a small, careful expression as he dipped a nugget of raw meat into a bowl of dark sauce and popped it into his mouth. "And I received word from my advisors that you have put forward a very interesting proposition."
     "We did think you should have time to consider the angles before we approached you."
     He flicked an ear. "A rail line from Bluebetter through to Land-of-Water. That is... audacious. And you offer us new technologies to assist in building it. This is provided that we agree to your other proposal — this new system of measurement. I have to ask outright: is this offer the extent of the services you are currently offering?"
     "Not at all," Rraerch said. "We will continue as has been agreed, but we do ask that you seriously consider it. Be aware we will also be making this same offer to other countries and governments. It is not exclusive."
     The Rris king picked up his glass and swirled the wine a few times, muzzle wrinkling as he slowly lapped a couple of times. Then he looked at me. "Ah Rihey, I was informed that you seem to approve of this... initiative."
     I nodded. "I think it is a necessary step."
     "For what reasons?"
     How much had he already been told? Was he asking me because he thought I'd slip up and say something I wasn't supposed to? "If you are going to start growing your industries, you will find the world starts getting a great deal more complex. This is a foundation. It gives you a solid base to build on."
     "[something] words," he said, flicking a hand as if waving a fly away. "But is it better than what we have at the moment? Why shouldn't Land-of-Water adopt our units?"
     "Theirs are no better than yours," I sighed, looking at the others. They didn't react. "And they're fully aware you wouldn't change to their system. So, they're changing theirs as well. They'll have to do as much as you to change to something that's... better, but not favoring any party."
     "It's better?"
     "It's based on something that's common everywhere, is measurable, is reproducible, and doesn't change. It's easily divisible — it's easy to convert between, for example, length and volume and weight. It's more accurate for extremely fine work, such as a hundredth of a centimeter. It's not perfect, but it is better."
     He stared at me over the rim of his glass, the midnight slits of his pupils twitching as he studied me. Was he trying to look for tells a Rris might exhibit? If he was, it didn't look like he found it. He huffed. "Making an entire country change something that's been that way for as long as anyone can remember, that's not such a small caveat."
     "Agreed. But there is profit in the conversion. Time is saved; errors and expenses are reduced; loss to fraud and conversion errors in trade are reduced; factories can share equipment; engineers and architects can share designs between nations."
     "You gave an interesting example, I hear."
     I sighed. "Not the best choice."
     "Interesting though."
     "But perhaps distracting from the point. A better example might a fire that happened in a city called Baltimore over a hundred years ago. It was serious. So serious that fire-fighting teams from neighboring cities and towns were called in. They could only stand and watch when they found the attachments on their hoses didn't quite fit the local water pipes. Over fifteen hundred buildings burned to the ground. Expensive."
     "Huhnn," he mused. "More convincing."
     "It is a sensible offer."
     His lordship tipped his head and then smiled. "Sometimes common sense doesn't enter into these affairs. Pride can undermine a lot. It really wouldn't be a great surprise if someone were to come up with another offer similar to yours simply on principle."
     "A," Rraerch waved agreement. "That is why we have added the offer of the rail line."
     "You believe that will make a difference?"
     Rraerch's muzzle twitched. "It offers advances in metallurgy and materials, engineering, chemistry, surveying and construction, vast improvements in transportation of goods and people. It will offer new markets and new opportunities. And a lot of that will be rendered useless if they don't adopt the new systems."
     "Ah." The Rris king weighed that information for a while, lapping from his glass again. "Of course you know," he said after a while, "we have a great deal invested in shipping. To advocate something that competes with that... well, some may call that counter-productive."
     "Not competing: complementing. Ships are still the best way to transport bulk goods long distances," I said and the Rris looked at me. I shrugged. "It's true. If you're sending large cargoes long distance, then sea is cheaper than by land. You have a large coastal fleet. It would be very advantageous to be able send bulky freight from the interior down here and then on around the coast. Bulk timber, ore, grain and meat, hemp and cloth... all uneconomical to transport in quantity by road and cart, but rail and sea make it a different story."
     I was watching him carefully and he didn't give anything away. Perhaps there was a little dilation of the pupils, but in the poor light it was difficult to tell. "Your people have this... story?"
     "A. We've been telling it a long time."
     "So you know this will work."
     I took a breath and looked at the others, then released it. "Sir, we made mistakes. I can try and help you avoid those, but you will doubtless come up with some of your own. I can promise to help; I can't promise perfection."
     Those eyes locked on mine for a few aging seconds and in that brief instance I got a glimpse of what lay behind the informal façade he was wearing that night: that mind that'd been chosen to run a nation, weighing and evaluating threats and assets, judging the weather, deciding when to sow and when to reap. That evening he was playing the amiable dinner companion, but how fast could that change?
     I had enough on my plate without trying to find out.
     "Very good," he abruptly smiled. "I'm always wary of those who promise the catch before it's caught. This is a decision that will take a bit of time. I will consult with my advisors and will doubtless have more questions for you. I also request a written and formal proposal, which I have no doubt you can provide?"
     Rraerch inclined her head. "Absolutely, sir. They are already prepared."
     "Excellent. And I will have an answer ready for you before you leave," he said and set his glass down. "Now, aesh Makepeace, you are finding the quarters satisfactory?"
     She flinched visibly, pulled her hands in. "I... yes, sir. Very much so, sir. Thank you, sir."
     "You should thank ah Rihey. I was surprised he felt you should be accorded such treatment."
     "Huhn, yes, sir," she said, looking even more anxious and confused.
     "She's helped me out in the past," I offered. "And I have to say thank you for agreeing to that request. It is appreciated."
     He flicked a hand. "The least we can do. And aesh Hiasamra'this..."
     Chihirae was watching me watching him. Nervous. She'd met with lords and ladies and kings before, but I don't think she'd sat down to dinner with one. At the sound of her name her ears twitched and she ducked her head, almost spilling her drink. "Sir?"
     "You enjoyed yourself at the reception last night?"
     "Yes, sir. Very much so."
     "You might be interested to hear my office has received several enquiries regarding the outfit you were wearing. I suspect we will see a few of those in the future. You may have started something of a trend."
     "That was never my intention, sir."
     He waved a hand. "Of course not. If it makes its way back to Shattered Water you just might want to have a word with your tailor about it, ensure than they appreciate any extra business that might come their way."
     "Yes sir," she said. "Thank you."
     "Our talk last night was most interesting, especially your story of how you met Mikah. A shame we were so pressed for time — that's something I would greatly enjoy hearing more about. I understand ah Rihey has meetings with the Bankers and Moneylenders Guild and the Printers Guild, so perhaps you would be able to share some time to relate it."
     "I... I don't believe I have any other engagements, sir," she said and glanced around at the others. "I would be happy to."
     "Perhaps the Guild should sit in," Jenes'ahn ventured. She was sitting very still, taking small sips of her drink. The scars were still lurid.
     "Will that be necessary, constable?" ah Thes'ita asked.
     "I don't know, will it?"
     There was a split-second pause before he spread hands in a shrug. "As you will. Aesh Hiasamra'this, I merely intend some light conversation, perhaps over mid-meal. No business talk. That is acceptable?"
     "Quite, sir," she said.
     "Excellent. I do look forward to it," he said, setting his glass down. As if that were a signal staff materialized around us, clearing away starter dishes with an efficiency of movement. More dishes materialized in front of us: plates with silver covers, tureens, bowls and side dishes. I was a little apprehensive: Rris tastes and sensibilities differed enough that I might find what they considered a delicacy under that lid, and those delicacies could be anything. Really, they ate every part of the cow but the moo. Alternatively, hearing that I liked my meat 'burned' they could give me a plate of charcoal briquettes.
     "'Swordfish' steaks," his lordship pronounced as the covers were lifted. "Very tasty. Your cook provided some instruction and these seem quite suitable. Wildroot, diced potato, squash, and plum. The garnishing sauces he recommended and deemed safe are in the white pots there. I believe you prefer the lighter wines with fish?"
     I was going to have to look at giving cook a raise.

The dinner ran over several expansive courses. During those we talked, discussing business, points of our journey there, news from Shattered Water, as well as some points of my old life. After that there'd been some more drinks, the highlight of which had been snifters of peach brandy with an alcohol haze coming off the top. I took it easy and sipped carefully. It was promising to be another early start and I didn't need a hangover on top of everything else. That wasn't a problem for the Rris — they don't seem to get hangovers. Perhaps it's something to do with a faster metabolism burning it off faster, I don't know. I just knew that while I could drink more than they could before feeling the effects, if I overindulged I'd suffer for it the next day.
     So the trip back to our quarters took a bit longer than the walk from them had. Voices were a bit louder, gaits a little less stable. Not quite drunk, but they were still flying a few sheets to the wind, the Rris chittering laughter that echoed through palatial hallways. Except for Jenes'ahn, who stalked the gloom with a hand resting on her holstered pistol.
     The Bluebetter guards stopped at the entrance to the guest annex while we continued on through to the realms guarded by Land of Water troops. At my door the others bade me a good night. Then Chihirae bumped against me and said she was staying with me and Rraerch yanked Chaeitch's tail when he was about to say something. Last I saw them they were tottering off to their own rooms. Makepeace asked something and Chaeitch laughed aloud.
     Yeircaez was waiting in the foyer. He just bowed quietly, unobtrusively and I thanked him and dismissed him for the evening.
     The bedroom was warm. Cold winter moonlight seeped through the frost-rimed windows, contrasting with the warm glimmer of gas lamps. Chihirae just shucked her tunic, stepped out of her breeches, and then flopped down on the bed. I undressed a little more carefully as she watched with half-lidded eyes.
     "This is what your trip to Open Fields was like? It doesn't seem so bad."
     "Huh," I almost laughed. "Some parts were better than others."
     "Good food, good drink. Lots of it. You had that?"
     "A. There was that. That was good. The people trying to hurt us weren't."
     "Huhn. That. I can do without that," she said.
     "But there were times like this. They want to make a good impression, so they do the best they can."
     "You didn't do things like this where you come from?"
     I smiled as I folded the jacket and hung it on the thing like a valet stand. "Not me. Not quite. I wasn't... important. I've been in some very good hotels, but not quite like this. And the service here is better."
     She leaned back, arching her back as she stretched, one arm, then the other, then each leg. "Ah, I've seen the pictures. Shiny lights, but no [style]. And women that are all oversized mammaries and no fur." She chittered and held a leg up.
     "As opposed to walking rugs?"
     "Hai, you see where that gets you tonight."
     "Is that a threat?"
     Teeth glistened as she grinned and lolled back on the bed. "Depends on whether you want to lie on the floor or on me tonight, a?"
     "I could just deny you, you know."
     A chitter and she waved a lazy arm in circles. "Really? I can smell your interest. Hai, I can see it. Huhn... male. All different; all the same."
     "You are a cruel woman."
     "A," she mocked me through a long yawn. "And impatient. And waiting."
     "Just... hold that thought," I said as I undressed. "Reminds me, do you think his lordship mentioned to other lords that your clothes the other night were usually worn by women?"
     "Huhn?"
     "If he didn't..." I had the unsettling mental image of facing Guild Lords in drag. I winced and shook my head. "That might be a problem. I don't know if I'll be able to keep a straight..."
     I turned back to the bed and of course she was asleep.
     "... face," I finished and sighed.
     She snored.
     "Always like to keep my audience riveted," I muttered as I regarded her furry figure, stretched out across my bed with an arm draped over her face and her chest rising with every faint snore. I felt... again there were those conflicts as human mechanisms grated against themselves. She wasn't my kind. She wasn't human, but I'd reacted as if she was.
     I'd played games like that before, in another world with another woman I'd loved. Similar kinds of banter, but here all the underlying nuances were...
     Crossed signals. Each of us imagining something neither of us could be.
     I watched her breathing and sighed myself. Well, it was probably for the best — I did need to get some sleep. She made some small protesting noises as I shifted her, pulled a blanket over her, and then snuffed out the lamps and fumbled my way back to the bed by the light of a winter moon.

"Mikah!"
     A sharp sting in my side and a voice hissing my name yanked me out of sleep. I blinked several times before I realized that the reason I couldn't see anything was that it was still dark. Someone was shaking me.
     "Mikah!"
     "Ah!" I jerked as claws jabbed again, rolled and groggily squinted at the figure. It was still night. Watery moonlight gave me barely enough light. "Chihirae? What..."
     "There's someone there!"
     "What..." I wasn't firing on all cylinders, not until her urgency sank in. The adrenaline jolt was like taking a pot of coffee intravenously. "Where?"
     "I saw someone," she hissed. "At the door. Watching us."
     I twisted to look. Old wounds ached in the chill. Some feeble moonlight filtered through the frost-rimed windows, but that didn't reach far. It was cold, freezing cold. The far end of the room was draped in shadows. I couldn't see anything. Didn't mean she couldn't though.
     "You're sure?" I hissed. "A guard?"
     "No," she snarled and pinpricks stabbed into my arm. "It wasn't..."
     Gunfire cracked through the night. The retorts were muffled, hollow, echoing, being fired in another room, but still too close. One shot barked and was followed by two more. Then an incredible silence in which I froze, feeling Chihirae also tensing.
     Then I was kicking through a tangle of sheets, urging Chihirae to stay down as I half-fell out of bed, scrambling for the closet where my coat was. I fumbled through the dark for a weapon even as voices started shouting. Doors banged. When the Rris burst in through the door I had a revolver and flashlight in hand. I swung around, spotlighting the door in the glare from the flashlight. There was shouting and frantic back-pedaling.
     "Sir!" a voice shouted around the doorframe. "Are you all right, sir?"
     "Who are you!?"
     "Guards, sir. Blunt, sir. You are all right?"
     "We're fine," I said. "What's going on? There were gunshots."
     There was movement. A guard cautiously rounded the doorframe, squinting into the glare. It was Blunt, with several other guards in Land-of-Water armor, all moving very deliberately and looking around warily. I lowered the revolver and light.
     "We don't know, sir," Blunt said. "We heard the shots. I believe they came from next door. Her ladyship's chambers."
     "Mikah!" another voice snarled and the guards parted to make way for the Mediators. Rohinia stalked on through, armor clad and pistol in hand. Jenes'ahn followed close behind, also armed but otherwise she was naked, fur rumpled from bed. There were scars visible. "You're all right?"
     "Confused," I said. "What's going on? Who's shooting?"
     "That's what we're trying to find out," he said. "You. Wait here. Constable, watch them."
     I stayed. She stayed. We stayed. Lamps were lit. Jenes'ahn looked at me, looked at Chihirae over by the bed. I could guess what she... No, I couldn't. What embarrassed me they wouldn't give a tinker's cuss about. That was my instincts overlaying my interpretations on them. So, I ignored her while I pulled on a robe and then took my coat to Chihirae. "Here," I said. "Put this on."
     "What's happening?"
     "I don't know. But please, wear this. If there are bullets flying around it'll make me feel better."
     It was too heavy for her, and she wore it like a tent, but it was better than nothing if there was gunfire. I sat with her on the edge of the bed, just staying close while Rris boiled through the rest of the suite. She leaned in. Her ears were back and her eyes wide.
     "It's okay," I murmured. "Whatever happened... I think it's done."
     "You know for certain?" she growled. "And what was it?"
     I shook my head.
     Guards were posted in the hall right outside the bedroom door. There were distant voices, some shouts, but otherwise nothing happened. It kept happening. After a time a guard came in and muttered something to Jenes'ahn. She cocked her head and followed him out.
     I patted Chihirae's leg. "I think I'll find out."
     The guards flinched when I headed for the door, and then looked panicky. "Sir..." one started to say.
     "Don't," I held up forestalling hand as I passed by. "If you have to watch me, come along."
     "I..." I heard from behind, then a coughed oath and a spatter of claws hurrying to catch up.
     The door through to Chihirae's quarters was open. There were voices. At the end of the short corridor the other door was open. I stopped dead because someone else already had. There was a body there, a crumpled figure lying face down in a smear of blood. My heart hammered as I carefully edged past.
     Far fewer lamps burned in Chihirae's quarters, and the rooms were artic cold, the tiled floor frozen. I followed the voices through to a bedroom. No wonder it was freezing: the balcony doors were open, icy wind and snow blowing in. There was another body, with Rris including the Mediators standing around it. The body was like the other: a Rris in nondescript greyish clothing sprawled in a heap with blood smeared in a short trail. A pistol lay on the floor; a thing with a bulky wheel lock mechanism. The conversation cut off and the Rris stared at me: Rraerch, our guard commander, a worried-looking Hedia, another armored guard I didn't know.
     "Mikah!" Rraerch started.
     "Mikah," Rohinia sighed. "I told you to wait."
     "I want to know what's going on," I said. "And don't say this doesn't concern me." His ears lowered.
     "I don't think anyone could truthfully say that," Jenes'ahn volunteered.
     "Sir," Hedia said. "I can assure you everything is under control. The intruders have been dealt with."
     "Quite," Rohinia said and turned to look at the body on the floor. "Mikah, how many shots did you say?"
     "Three."
     "Huhn. Then we have something of a mystery. Two bodies. One of their weapons fired."
     I did the numbers on that. "No guards intervened?"
     "No. And these didn't come in through the main door. Or the servants' entrance."
     I looked at the balcony doors. "So that would be the most obvious means of entry?"
     "It would seem so."
     I tensed. "Distractions?"
     "Huhn," was all he said and knelt, examined the body closer. "In your words, what happened?"
     "Chihirae woke me. She said she saw someone in the door. Then I heard the gunshots. I got my weapon just as the guards arrived."
     "She saw someone in the door?"
     "That one in the corridor?" I started, then thought a bit more. "Then why didn't they finish the job while they had the chance?"
     "A," he mused. "Mikah, go back to her. Look after her. You're more help there. We will have some more questions for the two of you."
     I hesitated.
     "Please," Rraerch spoke up, sounding tired. "Mikah?"
     I nodded and reluctantly left them with their murders and mysteries.

We spent the small hours of that morning waiting in the lounge. A fire blazed in the hearth. All the lamps were burning. Jenes'ahn was over by the fire with Chihirae, who was sitting close enough to the flames to shrivel her whiskers, her ears twitching at every odd noise from outside.
     "Can you tell me what happened?" Jenes'ahn asked Chihirae.
     "I told you," she said. "I woke up and there was someone there."
     "Why did you wake?"
     "I don't know," she said. "I... heard something?" She looked confused, looked at me, then shook her head like a flea had bitten her ear. "Someone... said something? Rot, I don't know."
     "What did you see?"
     "There was someone there. Standing in the doorway. Watching us."
     "Can you describe them? Male? Female? Clothing?"
     "I only saw them for a heartbeat... Just plain clothing. Grey, perhaps. Nothing bright.
     Nothing strange. Male, female... I don't know."
     "Did they say anything? Do anything?"
     "No. Just... watching. I saw them, then woke Mikah and when I looked again and they were gone. Mikah woke up and then there were the shots."
     Jenes'ahn's expression didn't flicker. She studied Chihirae's face for a few seconds, then flicked her ears and winced. "How many shots?"
     "Three. One sounded different from the others."
     "How so?"
     Chihirae paused, thinking hard before she carefully said, "Deeper? Slower?"
     Jenes'ahn turned to me. "Mikah, can you agree with this?"
     I shrugged. "I heard three shots. I didn't notice any difference. But her hearing is better than mine."
     "And you didn't see anything?"
     "No."
     "How long after you woke did you hear the shots?"
     "Um... twenty or thirty seconds perhaps. I was still half-asleep."
     "And then?"
     "I armed myself as quickly as possible. Until the guards turned up at the door. That was... a minute, I think? Perhaps less."
     "Huhn," she considered that.
     "What are our hosts saying about this?"
     "They are being [something] apologetic and cooperative. His lordship is taking a close and very personal interest. Guards are being doubled."
     "Again?" Chihirae snorted. "Have you done the math on that?"
     The Mediator's expression was blank. "It's necessary, Ma'am. The other options would be to accept sentries in your quarters."
     Chihirae's ears went back.
     Jenes'ahn noticed that. "I am afraid it's going to be a question of how much of your own [somethings] you give up for safety."
     Oh, that sounded familiar. I thought I'd left that sort of shit behind. Was that an objective of our assailants? To get me hiding behind locked doors? What would that gain them? "Is that going to be necessary?" I asked. "They came in the balcony? Find out how they got there. Seal those doors. Post guards on the roof."
     Jenes'ahn gave me a look that was... tired. "Mikah. We intend to do our duties. There will be more protection, but you can help by not taking any more risks. Your quarters will be secured, but, your ladyship, would you be willing to stay with Mikah the rest of the night?"
     Her ladyship looked worried. "You think they will return?"
     "We are ensuring they won't, but that does mean your quarters will be busy for a while."
     Plus there were two bodies to clear away. That was something else I didn't say. But I did have a notion. "Jenes'ahn, could she stay with you?"
     The Mediator stared at me. Chihirae stared at me. "I thought you'd be safer with her," I ventured, trying to explain. "She can protect you."
     "No," Jenes'ahn said eventually. "That won't work. We work in shifts, moving around. She is better with you. You have protected her well enough to date."
     I wanted to say it was all luck, and that would run out. I wasn't a fighter. I wasn't a soldier or a Mediator. I wasn't reliable...
     "Mikah," Chihirae said. "It's quite all right."
     Again I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it again. Nodded.
     Jenes'ahn stood, snorted softly. "You should know that his Lordship is remorseful, but tomorrow will go ahead as scheduled. I suggest you get some sleep. And lock the door."

Pre-dawn morning was frigid and frosty. An icy-clear night sky gradually lightened, blossomed into distant cathedrals of climbing clouds of burnished brass. salmons and sunlight touched the anvil heads while the city lurked in the prelight, serried ranks of slate roofs rising from a sea of low morning mist. Smoke trickled up from chimneys; hung in strata above the rooftops; glowed as the first light arrived.
     The night had been quiet. Chihirae and I had slept quietly, with the door locked and a heavy cabinet pushed in front of it. I thought that was a little over-the-top, but she felt better. And it kept the early morning wake-up crew out until I was good and ready. Over breakfast I had more time to consider the events of the night.
     As we passed through the yawning palace gates I sat back in the plush coach seats, gave Rohinia a hard stare, and asked, "What happened last night?"
     Chaeitch and Rraerch had been bickering quietly about something on our schedule. They shut up quickly.
     The Mediator didn't look in the least perturbed. "We're still trying to find that out."
     "It wasn't the balcony, was it," I said.
     He sat quietly for a while. That was all I needed. "Tell me," he eventually said, "what do you find odd about the situation?"
     "The bodies," I said. "Where they were wasn't... right. They were looking for her. If they'd come in the balcony they'd have known she wasn't there. They'd split up. One had gone for the bedroom and the other for the hall. They each had guns. Three shots were fired. How many were theirs?"
     "One," he said.
     "The one in the bedroom?"
     "A. They appear to have missed. The bullet was lodged in the wall outside the door."
     "So... there was someone else," I said.
     "The teacher saw them," he said.
     I played that back in my head. "That's... that can't be right. They came to my room. They stood in the door. Chihirae woke and saw him. Then he went and... shot the other two?"
     "We are still trying to ascertain the precise sequence of events," Rohinia said. "But, on the surface, that does appear to be the case."
     "And then they left again," Chaeitch noted. "And not through the balcony?"
     "No," Rohinia said. "No trace of them going that way."
     "Staff entrances?" I asked. "Front door? Secret doors?"
     Rohinia waved no. "There were guards on all entrances. No-one used them. There are no secret doors."
     "I've heard that before," I said.
     "The rooms were fitted for you. The walls are stone. No-one cut through them and we were assured there are no hidden entrances. From the rooms below you would need a ladder. And then cut through the floor. And those areas are well guarded, as is the roof above."
     "But," I said. "They got in. Then someone killed them and got out."
     "Perhaps."
     "Could they have hidden somewhere? Get into a uniform so when the guards are running around they simply join the confusion and walk out?"
     Rohinia cocked his head. "Interesting ploy. But these squads are units. The servants admitted here are screened. They all know one another. A strange face wouldn't get far."
     "So," I sighed, "we come back to the fact that they entered and departed and we don't know how. By definition that is a hidden entrance."
     He snorted.
     "What interests me," Rraerch mused, "is what Chihirae saw. They came to kill you. But one of them just watched you? From what you've said it sounds as if they gained access to her apartments, found she wasn't present and went looking. One found you, watched you, and then went and killed the others. Does that sound right?"
     "That," Rohinia said, a little reluctantly, "does sound like what happened. But, we can't say why."
     "So, someone was actually trying to protect him."
     "Now, there's a change."
     "Hush, Mikah. And no-one has approached the government or the Guild?"
     "Not that we are aware."
     "An internal Guild struggle?" Chaeitch ventured.
     "Would explain the mercenaries," Rraerch said. "But which Guild. Or Guilds?"
     "Follow the money," I said. All their heads turned to look at me. I shrugged. "Find out who's been hiring. The Guild can do that."
     "To an extent," Rohinia said. "Mercenaries are... private concerns. They don't have an overarching guild. They're separate [companies]," that word used in a military sense, "so their makeups vary greatly. For better or for worse. Which is why they're not held in great esteem. While some companies actively promote themselves in towns and markets, others are more... discreet. As are their clients."
     "In other words, you can't," I said.
     "We can," he corrected. "In time. We don't have current files, but the Guild is aware. We are learning."
     "So give it a few years," I observed.
     Either the sarcasm went by him or he ignored it. "Sooner than that. But the issue isn't quite so straightforward. You see, almost all the Guilds have been hiring."
     I waited for him to continue, then looked to the others. "What does that mean?"
     "It means," Rraerch sighed, "that everyone is expecting trouble."

Bankers Guild was our first stop.
     I'd gone in with half-formed stereotypes of fat cats wearing waistcoats counting piles of coins in plush leather-trimmed offices. I was only partly wrong.
     The Bankers Guild hall was in an elegant district in the southwest of the city, as far from the stink and soot of the industrial areas as it was possible to get. The snow-bound streets were paved and clean. The surrounding buildings were new multi-story brick with glazed widows watching over elegantly-kept gardens in quiet courtyards and atriums. So I was somewhat surprised to see the bankers' guild hall was an old cluster of buildings squatting amongst the sharp-corniced newcomers which clustered around like barnacles to a rock.
     The hall occupied a good half of the block. Actually, it was half the block — adjoining buildings merged together in a conglomeration of different styles and ages. There were dark stones walls and whitewashed plaster and yellowish sandstone bricks. Steep red tile roofs abutted verdigris-green copper-clad turrets and ice-slick slate tiles. The bare threads of ivy crawled across stonework. Slits of windows peeked out at the streets from variously angled second and third floors and chimney stacks huddled together for mutual support. About the only impressive feature was the front door, which was set into a subdued portico supported by oddly-proportioned columns and surrounded by polished copper scrollwork set into the stone lintel.
     We didn't go in that way. Instead the carriages took us past and around the corner and in through an unobtrusive gateway and then along an alley between sheer stone walls. There was a courtyard in there, nestled away in the heart of the block. It was a spacious court, with barren gardens and a central fountain drained for winter. There were a lot more windows here: tiers of glazed windows of all shapes and sizes on all the floors of the mismatched architecture surrounding the court.
     Guards, both Shattered Water and Bluebetter, were everywhere. Security had been stepped up due to the threats, but there was no way these meetings couldn't go ahead — both Bluebetter and Land-of-Water governments had made too many promises to too many of these powerful guild leaders. Reneging on deals like that would cause almost as many problems as the unfortunate death of a troublesome guest.
     Inside was dark wood, polished marble and tiles and brass fittings. The inlaid floors were nicked and marked from the passage of countless clawed feet. The rugs and drapes and paintings were faded. At first you might have thought neglected, but then you noticed there was no dust, that the parquetry was fantastically elaborate, the rugs were comparable to ones I'd received as gifts from embassies, the paintings were masterpieces and the brass was all well-polished. It was all subtly elegant and expensive and worn in like a pair of high-quality old pants. It said 'there is real wealth here and all this stuff is frippery'.
     The meeting room was on an upper floor, in some corner room where walls were paneled, with the lower half in dark oak — aged almost black — and the upper in a sun-faded olive and blue-green wallpaper. They were hung with pictures in cracked oils, convoluted old wooden scent sculptures, and copper portrait masks. Diamond-latticed windows looked out over rooftops cluttered with copper-clad turrets and chimney stacks. Beyond those a newer tower rose over the skyline, like a brick lighthouse complete with intermittent blinks of light glinting from apparatus on top.
     Flat winter light diffused through the watery glass. It eased some of the chill and drew color from the ornate rugs and the green leather upholstery on the small side-tables set at each cushion, but not much cheer from the dour Rris facing us.
     A semicircle of plump bankers sat on plump cushions at their low desks. There were seven of them and they weren't a humorous lot — grey-speckled, white-whiskered, welldressed, well-fed. Fat cats. We sat on our own cushions in an opposing arc, all their eyes focused on me.
     To be honest, I went in somewhat confused as to what they expected of me. They had complex governments and economies; supply and demand, international trade and industry, banks and money lenders, speculation and investment and inflation and taxation. They weren't things I had blueprints for and they weren't things you could simply experiment with. They almost certainly understood more than I did about those affairs.
     We sat and talked. There was a lot of that, on both sides. The Rris on the other side had questions, most of which were fielded by Rraerch. I was able to sit, answering when I was asked a direct question, but otherwise listening while the others talked and the Rris financiers stared at me. I started to understand that it wasn't what I knew that interested them, it was the way that knowledge would be applied, the opportunities that might arise.
     They were the Rris version of venture capitalists.
     Of course new projects required funding. The governments had its own money, but there was a limit to what they were willing or able to invest and wanted to disseminate the risks. The Land-of-Water government worked with Smither Industries and a webwork of other investors; the Bluebetter government worked along the same lines, but these potential financiers hadn't had time to be convinced of my credentials. They wanted to see just what they were getting for their money.
     So the questions came and went on for some time. They asked about my past: my origins and history. They asked how I'd come here. They asked about what I'd done, my experiences in Land of Water and Cover My Tail. They asked what I could offer Bluebetter and why they should be interested. Rraerch answered when she could while I watched and tried not to think of the whole experience as a rerun of Dragons Den. Or Lions' Den, which considering the studiedly lazy stares they weighed me up with might have been more apt.
     One was acting as a spokesman. An elderly Rris in the center of their group, immaculately groomed and dressed in a subdued kilt and vest that bore all hallmarks of finely tailored threads. As were the three seated to either side of him. By the way those others addressed — and often interrupted him — he was simply the honorary chairman of this meeting and he didn't seem to hold any real authority over them.
     There was talk about how current innovations in Shattered Water were progressing. How they were affecting industry, commerce, everyday life. What seemed to be the most worthwhile.
     "You are saying," he said to us, to me, "you can't tell us how these changes will affect the world. Not for the better or for the worse. You can't give us a definite [prospectus]?"
     I looked at the others, trying to judge if I'd interpreted his words correctly, then shrugged. "No. I don't think anyone could."
     "You think we should just gamble on these ideas?"
     "Isn't that what investing is?" Rraerch offered.
     "Not if it's done correctly," the other primly replied. "We do try to ensure... favorable conditions before entering into such agreements. You say you can't guarantee such."
     "No," she said. "Never guarantee. However, all the initiatives we've undertaken to date have been successful and have at least turned a profit. Land of Water government has seen enough potential that they've supported and [bankrolled] a number of them. However, there are some plans on the table that will require more extensive and diversified backing."
     "More expensive than the new ship engines?"
     "Considerably more so. Such that we will most likely have to look beyond the Land-of-Water government and lenders for finance."
     "Huhn," his pupils flexed, going from slits in the sunlight to black pools and then back again. He cocked his head. "Would this involve your standard measure proposal?" "Amongst others. But that one in particular we feel is something that has to be done.
     And it will require not only finance, but active support from institutions such as your own."
     "Ah," he mused. "It's an interesting proposal. But you are aware, of course, that all our current coinage is measured with existing scales? They may vary wildly between countries, but they are measures people are familiar with. To change measures... that would be remintings, re-evaluation of currencies, trade weights, tariffs, tax rates... it is a formidable undertaking."
     "And the more we look, the more necessary it seems," she said and proceeded to enumerate the proposal points, technical and financial.
     "Ambitious," he thoughtfully proclaimed it when she wound down. "And would the backing be due to financial and logistical concerns or political?"
     "A little of each. That is one of the projects being considered that would require cooperation and assistance of neighboring countries. Of course simply the proposal of such usually raises questions and suspicions all around. But if such projects were being bankrolled, invested in, and supported by civilian and non-politically [something] [something] from several countries, then it may be seen as less of a [charade?]/[stalking horse?]."
     Christ. I was conversant in the main Rris language, but when we got into technical and shop talk, jargon, slang, and idioms, then it was a struggle to keep up. Add inhuman mindsets into the mix and it can be difficult to even extrapolate from context.
     The banker flicked an ear. "You have your work set out, then. Far simpler proposals have fallen apart over any number of issues and disagreements."
     "A. But those didn't usually have so much at stake. There are possibilities lurking in the undergrowth that countries can't afford to ignore. They would change... much."
     The Rris bankers seemed to consider this. Then their spokesman said, "Additionally, there are some other questions that have come up."
     "A?"
     "A," the Rris banker's eyes shifted, flitting across our faces. "How to best put this... You can't give assurances about what these changes will do, but we also have existing investments in a considerable range of areas — how do we know your innovations won't adversely affect those?"
     "Again, you don't," Rraerch said promptly. "There's a very good chance some existing institutions may be rendered obsolete. And when that happens, would you not want to be involved in whatever replaces them?"
     "Indeed," the banker replied. "But the really interesting question is: how do we know that what replaces them won't itself be [superseded]? That you won't simply offer a new and slightly better idea sometime after? We would be engaged in a continual and futile game of chasing our tails."
     "It is a problem," I said and saw all the attention swing back to me. "My kind have experience with it. Every few months something new comes out. Something you purchased a half-year ago is suddenly old. Everyone has to go and buy a new one. A lot of money is spent. Quite a problem."
     The banker started to speak but one of the other tapped claws on a table in a staccato pattern and he subsided. Looked thoughtful. A couple of the others exchanged glances.
     "Very well," the banker coughed. "We shall take that under advisement. Until precise details are forthcoming and we can make some evaluations we can't make any commitments. You understand."
     Rraerch waved a hand in a slow gesture that incorporated the sign for agreement along with an invitation to continue. The other inclined his head and looked at me again.
     "Finally, we've heard a lot about your associate here," he said. "A lot of talk of how these innovations are coming from him. But, it does have to be said, that, although he is... impressive, there is some..." he seemed to consider his choice of words for a few heartbeats before settling on, "reluctance to believe that he is singularly responsible for these changes; that he has even more information to impart. So there's some understandable hesitancy to invest in projects that might be what some describe as '[wishful] thinking' at best and an elaborate invention at worst."
     I looked at the others. They were being uncommonly blunt with their wording. Not going quite so far as to utter the word fraud, but dancing on the line.
     The banker inclined his head. "There is no disrespect intended, but you must understand that this is business, and our business is being careful. You say you can't make any guarantees? Well, that does make us considerably more careful. And there are more than a few who would like some more assurance that there is a future in these initiatives."
     Rraerch looked at me. So did the rest of them. Rohinia flicked his ears and gestured assent. I lifted the laptop case onto the table and opened it.
     "I have heard of this," the banker said. "This is your lantern-light picture show?"
     "Something like that."
     His head tipped slightly, his muzzle lifting in a dismissive sniff. "I'm not sure that will be enough. Painted plates and lenses and lantern light. Not so impressive."
     "Really? That is a pity," I said as I turned the screen to face them and hit the play button.
     Half of them recoiled visibly, one almost falling back off his cushion. I hastily keyed the volume down while they gaped teeth at me and the machine. "Ahhh, a bit loud," I said. "Apologies. Let's try that again, but perhaps not so impressive this time, a?"

As the carriage pulled away from the Bankers' Guild hall I was lost in my own thoughts as I gazed out the window up at the ice-encrusted façade of the hall drawing away. Were they watching us? There were a lot of windows. I didn't notice the question until Rraerch poked me in the leg with a claw tip. "Hai, you there? The constable asked a question."
     "Oh? Ah, sorry," I said. The other three were watching me. I scratched at my neck. "I was... what was it?"
     "How did you know to say that?"
     "What is 'that'?"
     "Their issue with the troubles changes would bring. What you said changed their minds quite abruptly. You say you have trouble understanding us, but you knew to say that."
     "Oh." I shrugged and looked outside again but the hall was behind us. "I think I know the type, and the idea of something that people buy and then keep paying for is one they're very interested in. I can tell you something now: if you want to find real criminals, watch them."
     "Mikah, they're Guild leaders in this city."
     I nodded vaguely. "Rob a person in the street and it's a crime. Rob many people by manipulating numbers in a book and it's business."
     "Is that intended to be facetious?"
     I took a breath and met his eye. "Smart types learn that businesses such as banking are far more profitable than outright criminal activities. The position gathers money and power and there are types who are drawn to that. Some have morals, some don't. The latter have an advantage in that they are... not weighted down by rules. They aren't afraid to lie, cheat, steal, or do whatever they think they must to get what they desire. You must've met some like that before."
     He hesitated. "A. It's not unknown."
     "What do you do about it? If a simple street tinker comes to you with a dispute against a wealthy individual such as the ones we just met, what do you do? You are Mediators — how do you mediate that?"
     He blinked. "That would depend. All have the right to a fair and balanced hearing. You should be aware of that. If it's a simple matter, we refer it to local guard. If it has potential to cause greater unrest, then we would be interested."
     "Really? Disreputable or dangerously insane individuals in positions like that were responsible for world-wide financial disaster in my world. More than a few times."
     Creases wrinkled his muzzle as he frowned and Chaeitch and Rraerch looked wary. "I have to say that's not a good preconception to enter business deals with."
     "Just saying what I see. Powerful people tend to make the rules, and you can be certain those rules favor themselves. Perhaps Rris are different from us in that regard. Perhaps you're better at dealing with that sort of problem."
     "A problem, you call them?"
     It was then I noticed that he'd gone very still — that motionless, hard stare that meant... something. And the other two were very quiet. He was usually a lot more relaxed than that — this was something I'd expect from Jenes'ahn, which meant I'd trodden on his tail somewhere. I nodded carefully. "A caution," I said. "Nothing more. As I said: perhaps Rris can deal with that sort of thing better than we can."
     He sat and stared, rocking as the carriage swayed, and a heartbeat went by before he said, "Something we can do better than your kind?"
     "Something you can watch for," I amended. "Perhaps something else you might be able to avoid."
     "Huhn," he seemed to settle. "How much do you know about them?"
     I considered, then waggled my hand in a shrug. "I think they could be, but being sure... I can't be. Finance is complicated. My kind's systems were almost incomprehensible to most people. That was probably by intent, so experts could manipulate it. Yours... I think it's not as complex, but I don't know how much I don't know."
     "Perhaps aesh Smither could give you some lessons."
     I winced. I think she did too.
     The carriages took us towards our second appointment for the day. That was with the Coopers Guild, of all things. I'd wondered about that, but a look at the planned visits showed a schedule dictated by physical and logistical restraints rather than personal preferences. Seen as a representation on a map our daily outings might've looked something like a child's drawing of a daisy: an off-center core of the palace surrounded by petal-shaped tracks of excursions out and back again. All logically and sensibly and impartially laid out. It smacked of Mediator Guild work.
     And the Coopers Guild wasn't as limited as I'd thought. They made barrels, yes, but those were essentially the cargo and shipping containers of the Rris world: strong, waterproof, ubiquitous, used for ocean-bound and land trade goods as well as more liquid storage. Their hall, while not huge, was also in that good part of town. It was also stately and elegantly furnished with artworks and furniture. Although, perhaps times weren't as good as they had been — there were a few gaps where now-absent pieces of art had once hung.
     The meeting went about the same — there were the usual questions about me, about what I offered, about what I heralded. And as usual I could only answer a few of their questions and certainly didn't reveal the fact that back home barrel-making was a decidedly niche industry. Even so, reactions were mixed.
     Questions and negotiations occupied the rest of the afternoon, dragging back over the same old details. Conversation was slow. I had to concentrate and listen, carefully considering words and inflection and body language and expressions, making sure I didn't read anthropomorphic intentions into something and offer an inappropriate response. A lifting of the lips wasn't a smile, a steady stare didn't mean honest intentions, and contrary to what Disney would have you believe, there weren't any ridiculous eyebrows to telegraph emotions for me. It took effort for me to try and decipher what was being said and what was being intended.
     When we finally got back into the coaches I was as drained as the grey evening light.
     The early winter night had closed in and the palace was lit up like a constellation fallen to earth. A phenomenal waste of candles and oils lamps, resources and time just to show off. But I smiled politely and made impressed noises as we walked past polished troops and through glittering halls. Hedia greeted us and informed us we'd be dining with his lordship that evening.
     There was time for a quick shower before a precision formation of staff aggressively moved in to get me pruned and attired in a state deemed appropriate for state affairs. The clothing was comfortable and not overly formal, so that was a reassurance that the meal wouldn't be a circus.
     In fact it was in a small room near the King's chambers. A cozy dining room paneled in dark wood, blood-colored plaster and embossed gold wallpaper, and heated better than the frigid hallways had been. Rraerch and Chaeitch were already seated, lapping from tiny porcelain bowls. They looked up as I was ushered in with Jenes'ahn following close. I was seated, with her on one side and Chaeitch on the other. There were two empty cushions at the end of the table.
     I looked around and frowned. "Where's Chihirae? And Makepeace?" Had they neglected her again?
     "They send apologies," someone said before anybody else could answer. The Rris king entered, Hedia trailing behind. "They both have appointments tonight," his lordship explained as he settled himself, settled bright eyes on me. "An invitation was extended by several lords to spend this evening at a winter celebration in town. It is quite an exclusive affair. Aesh Hiasamra'this and Tehi accepted. Constable Rohinia is escorting them."
     Don't worry? We'd been attacked! Someone had tried to break into her room! And now she'd traipsed off to a soirée somewhere in a strange city? I was trying to find the words to protest when Rraerch said quietly. "Mikah, she needs this."
     That stopped me before I got started. She looked quite serious. "Truly?" I asked.
     She dipped her muzzle, gave me a small smile. "Trust me on this."
     The others didn't offer anything. I took a breath, subsided and nodded. "Alright. I was just... worried. She will be well-treated?"
     His lordship snorted. "People know you'll shred the ears of anyone who causes her problem. Besides, after her entrance the other night, some of her anecdotes, she's interesting. People like that."
     "Doesn't hurt you either," Chaeitch added and then looked worried and hastily added, "She has some stories that make you seem more... well, more of a person."
     "Oh," I tried to find something to say to that and all I could come up with was, "Good."
     "Excellent," his lordship proclaimed and picked up his bowl of liquor. "Now, if I may ask, how was your day's business?"
     That evening the food was palatable, as was the drink. And of course there was more talk, hours of it. About how that day had gone, what we'd discussed, if there was anything we needed or wanted. And he asked what I thought of their fair city and I had to confess I hadn't seen much of it, and what I had had been through the windows of a moving coach. He assured me that would be remedied.
     I don't know exactly what time we finished, but it was late. It was dark outside, frost was lacing windowpanes, my voice was on its last legs, and even the Rris were looking drowsy in the warmth. We made our excuses, gave our thanks for the hospitality, and retired.
     The chill air in the halls nipped at bare skin on the walk back. It went some way to doing what a good cup of coffee normally would. Enough that I thought to approach the guards outside Chihirae's room. "Is her ladyship back?"
     I saw their eyes twitch past me to look back down the hall to where Chaeitch and Rraerch were lingering outside their quarters. "No, sir," one of them said. "Not yet."
     I had a dozen simultaneous thoughts about the horrible things that might've happened. Then I just nodded. "Thank you," I said and Chaeitch and Rraerch were still watching as I returned to my rooms.
     My own quarters were warm, dimly lit, and an oasis away from alien expressions, demands, and desires. After the onslaught of that day the solitude was overwhelmingly welcome. I shucked the finery and stood in the gloom and briefly weighed up the comparative merits of the bed or another shower. The bed won. I flopped back onto the expansive comforter and don't remember closing my eyes.
     There were dreams again. Not the worst ones, but still weird ones with dark undercurrents that kept me washing in and out of real sleep.
     There was heavy iron in my hands. A spotlight only illuminated a fraction of the darkness, of the empty stage. There were things coming up the stairs. I could hear them...
     One of those ebbing tides brought me back to semi-consciousness, laying tangled in sheets and darkness and blearily wondering if the sound of distant voices and doors closing was still in my head. Then the bed shifted as someone clambered on and across and then a warm weight settled in beside me and for some drowsy reason I was thinking back to a dog I'd had long ago.
     Until there was a belch that rattled off the walls. The weight rolled over. "Hai, you awake?"
     "Am now," I mumbled and cracked an eyelid. I needed have bothered: it was dark and the room was nothing but blackness. "Chi?"
     "Chihirae," she corrected and chittered. High-octane breath washed over me. "How... s' your day been?"
     "Not as fun as yours, I think," I said. "You all right? No... troubles?"
     "Oh, so many," she moaned and giggled again. "'s hard to walk in a straight line."
     "Uh-huh. Drunk much?"
     "Drink. Drunk. Eat. Ate," she chittered again. "Lots of food. Drink. 'spenive spuff. Lot of people and talking," she slurred and squirmed around, insinuated hands into the sheets so clawtips pricked my chest and she ran leathery fingerpads over the skin of my belly. "Now, where's it gone..."
     "A? What?"
     "Huhn, somewhere here," she muttered and her hand grabbed. I made a noise as I convulsed reflexively. "Ah, penis, penis, penis," she chirruped in a high voice and pulled and tugged. "Funny-funny looking, but it will serve."
     "You could," I squeaked, "have asked."
     "Hnnn," I felt her rumble thoughtfully as she toyed. She took a while to reply. "Mikah, today was different," she eventually said and her tone was almost a sing-song. "Big halls and fine arts. I saw the big library, the big university, met lot people. Highborn, sun-warmed, powerful people. They asked me questions. They listened to me. Like I was one of them. There was food and music. I enjoyed myself. I had fun today. And now, tonight, I want to finish with some more. You know what I'm going to do?"
     "... no?" I squeaked into the expectant silence.
     She leaned close and I felt her exhalation as she murmured, "Anything I want."

"Morning and waking," Chihirae greeted me from over the platter of blood sausage she was devouring. I groaned an acknowledgement as I settled myself and surveyed the spread arranged in the parlor. There was enough there for a platoon.
     "And what's with you?" Chihirae asked, head cocked.
     "I think you broke something last night," I grumbled.
     "Fragile little butterfly, aren't you," she chittered and forked another mouthful in. I glowered. A racing metabolism gave her a fever-like body temperature. It also meant she burned off a bender in no time. No hangovers for Rris, dammit.
     "There's something that might make you feel better," she casually offered.
     "I don't think I can trust what you say," I said, lifting the lid of a tureen and finding it full of small, white, steaming-hot eggs. "You are a bad woman. What is it?"
     She flashed a grin. "Hedia has brought a schedule for today."
     "Already?"
     "A. I think you might be surprised. It's here. I can read it for you?"
     Since I was functionally dyslexic in written Rris, that was easier for everyone. And she was right: I was surprised.
     The day wasn't to be spent in meetings with various industry leaders. Rather it was to be spent seeing some of the city and visiting points of interest. There were some private galleries on the list, as well as a museum and the university. Chihirae said there were some gardens kept by the academy of life sciences that Hedia said I might be interested in.
     "That almost sounds like fun," I mused. "What do you think?"
     "Trying to keep you happy," another voice offered. Chaeitch sauntered in, tailed by the two Mediators. He sniffed once, then made a beeline for the venison jerky and plucked several strips. "Perhaps you don't want to question it too much: they might think you don't like it."
     Gift horse and all that. I shut up and finished my breakfast.
     The day started out gray, with a freezing mist. That burned away in midmorning leaving smeared wisps of cloud high overhead and towering ramparts of grey and black on the distant skyline. But the weather was of little concern when we were wandering through galleries of alien treasures.
     There were no civic museums in the Rris world. Not open to the public. The great works were kept by private owners, usually the wealthy and powerful. They had their own galleries and the great unwashed masses weren't welcome.
     Apparently that didn't include us, especially not with the King's personal aide leading the way. The two places we visited were in the city proper. They might have been called townhouses, if townhouses wrapped an entire city block in walls, filled it with carefully groomed wilderness, and laid sprawling manors in them. Tucked away in their own folds the old stonework walls and slate and tile roofs were punctuated with new windows and fresh paint. The manors and their interiors were impressive, but still felt hollow. Unlived in. They were places that were only occupied occasionally, when the lords and ladies had cause to be in the city. They reminded me of another place I'd once spent a night in while on the run.
     These weren't quite as empty as that shell of a house, with its musty rooms and dustsheet covered furniture. The windows on these halls were un-shuttered. Sunlight gleamed on marble and gilt. And there were courteous staff who ushered us in and otherwise left us to our own devices.
     Which were the galleries.
     There were halls lined with artworks. Rooms of sculptures and carvings. Metal and stone, wood and bone. There was an entire hallway lined with polished marble bare save for a rug running its entire length, colored in verdant colors and depicting — in the most fantastically ornate detail — the landscape, flora, and fauna along the length of the Muddy River. Carvings made from pure amber glowed with internal light. Elegant tapestries spun from Rris fur hung from walls alongside plaques set with polished blades arranged in fans and starbursts and paintings.
     There were walls draped with paintings like the uncountable family photos stippling the hallways of a family matriarch. There were portraits, scenic landscapes, still lifes and all shapes and sizes. Some of the works were ancient tempura on wood, browned and muted behind cracked and glazed varnish; others looked fresh enough to have been painted yesterday. Watercolors took a back stage and tended to be small things, but they were beautifully done. Even though those estates were the equivalent of town-houses for out-of-town lords, Chaeitch and Chihirae told me some of the pieces were quite renowned. Hedia confirmed that, naming names and pointing out items of historical interest.
     I myself didn't know enough of their history or art culture to be able to place scenes or artists, but I was able to see the trends and similarities in styles across the works. There were distinct techniques and brush strokes. It was intriguing seeing how the Rris limited visual range led to some odd tints creeping into paintings, and I did notice these tended to be consistent between different artists. Possibly something to do with the ingredients with which they mixed their paints adding tints they weren't aware of.
     Those visits occupied the relaxed morning, which passed by overly quickly. For midday meal we visited a sort of combination restaurant/ playhouse. There was an atrium with an open air stage set where tables had a good view. We had a section to ourselves, a pair of tables surrounded by a DMZ of empty places and guards. Our hosts had provided furs for me to wrap myself in, while the Rris actors and clientele didn't seem to mind the frigid air that drew curling breaths from people and hot dishes.
     The meal was hot, filling food. Broths to start with, then things like steaming spring rolls that I tried cautiously — Rris cuisine features some odd delicacies. It turned out they were stuffed with diced meat and a sauce which proved safe enough. As we ate we watched the entertainment on stage. The show was a series of vignettes, where each act was a short story featuring someone who'd appeared in the previous act, so the arc flowed from a merchant hunting for a deal through a series of characters and situations, everyone from a street seller to a groomer to a dockhand. And the perspectives of what was happening shifted with every character.
     Okay. So it wasn't Star Wars. But to a people who didn't have mass-produced entertainment continually trying to one-up itself with explosions and cheap thrills, just a play about someone else's life could be a unique distraction.
     I huddled in the warm furs, hands wrapped around a mug of steaming hot mead and sipped and asked questions about what was going on up on stage. My companions tried to explain witticisms and puns. I even understood a few of them. Unfortunately, they don't really translate in the same way that 'when is a door not a door' riddle doesn't work in other languages.
     Our next port of call was familiar. The university, the same place they'd conducted those medical exams. And for a time I was worried there'd be a repeat of that. But we passed those buildings and headed around to the southern side of the campus where the buildings were new brick with a lot of glass. The lower floors were fronted with conservatories of gently rounded wrought-iron frames filled with very expensive panes of glass. The glass wasn't the newest so the quality wasn't fantastic, so they contained their share of warps and bubbles, but they let sunlight through to the greenery growing underneath. A Rris with a broom was going around knocking snow and ice loose.
     "This is a... what?" I asked. "I don't think I know the word. For growing plants?"
     "[Conservatory]," Chaeitch offered.
     "Interesting plants," Hedia elaborated. "Ships are returning new specimens all the time. The university grows them here for study. Perhaps you can offer some insights."
     As soon as we stepped inside the warmth was noticeable. Almost uncomfortably warm after the winter air, and also muggy and smelling of earth and flowers and pine and a smear of more unfamiliar scents. The Rris who met us were polite and obviously as twitchy as a steer in a steakhouse. They stuttered and flinched their way through greetings and only relaxed when they started showing us around their work.
     Bluebetter ships ranged further than those of most Rris nations. They were in a better geographical position and had more maritime and shipbuilding experience. They'd sent expeditions across the Atlantic to Europe. Down to Africa and back across to South America. And of course they'd collected specimens on those trips. In those conservatories were samples of plants from all over, arranged in rooms of differing heat and humidity. I'm not a gardener, let alone a botanist, so most of them were meaningless to me. They could've been common weeds for all I knew. But they had already isolated some they thought might be useful: things that looked like blue carrots, flowers and lilies and tulips, flaxes, what was probably mustard, parsley, broad-leafed things that might have been aloe plants.
     "There's an unending stream," one of the keepers explained as we walked along one of the conservatory isles. There were planters along the floor, more at waist height and still more hanging from the ceilings, all dribbling greenery and fragrance. Large terrariums — like dog houses constructed from glass — were filled with more flora. Bell jars covered individual specimens of flowers or sometimes moss. Little labels in Rris script were neatly pinned to each planter. "Whenever a ship comes back they bring cuttings, seeds, samples in [terrariums]. Sometimes they don't take. Other times they sprout like weeds. Interesting to find the ones that closely resemble local plants, such as this [coriander] herb."
     "Edible?" Chaeitch asked.
     "These? A. Quite. We have found a few spices that merchants have been interested in. It'll take them some time to get harvestable crops though. There are even more samples coming back from the southern lands."
     We pushed through into another section that was like a slice of rain forest, with giant ferns and trees already pushing against the class canopy.
     "Too many," the botanist sighed and brushed aside a frond. "The explorers there have told us there are plants which only grow in a few hundred square meters. Further away than that and they are another species. As it is we have thousands of specimens we simply haven't got room for."
     "And you have found anything worthwhile?" Chaeitch asked.
     "Oh, yes. Nuts and fruits and narcotics and some extremely good timber."
     "This?" Rraerch asked, poking at a trunk and pulling fingers away with a sticky, white sap.
     "A type of sap," the botanist waved a shrug. "Tastes terrible. And it's sticky. Difficult to get out of fur."
     "Now you say," she muttered, trying to unobtrusively wipe her fingers on a bench. After the conservatories were studies and libraries — rooms of shelves full of books, desks covered with folios and pages. Those in turn were full of text and illustrations of all manner of plants. The drawings were ink line and watercolor works, and they were all masterfully done. Without cameras to do the work for them, botanists would have plenty of opportunities to hone such skills.
     We came away from the conservatories without any real concrete gains on either side. I recognized a few of the samples, and mentioned most of them to our hosts, but there were a lot more I didn't know. Quite frankly, the Rris were better off conducting their own research.
     From there we returned to the palace, but didn't make for the front entrance. The carriages took us on a roundabout trek following a winding trail through the grounds, finishing in a place I at first thought were stables. There was a cobbled courtyard surrounded by long, low buildings with big sliding doors shut tight. There was an animal smell hanging in the air, and that smell grew stronger as we approached the first building.
     As soon as we got in the door a brace of wild pigs squealed at us, triggering a cacophony of animal noises that resounded away down the building.
     Ranks of cages marched away into the lamplight. They weren't little boxes, but barred enclosures. And the animals in them squealed and lowed and howled and belled. "His lordship has established this [menagerie]," Hedia said, puffed up from either pride or the cold as she gestured expansively. "Explorers are bringing all manner of creatures back from distant lands. They were scattered: in shows, private holdings, entertainment halls, fight pits and so. The life-studies appealed to his lordship and he funded this. The finest collection of beasts from [Europe] and [Africa] known."
     It was a zoo. Or what a zoo from a hundred years ago might've been like. The cages were elementally sparse: stone floors and walls and frontages of thick iron bars. There was some straw and water. Narrow slits for windows let in chinks of light and biting cold. Lamps hung from wooden rafters and flickered in the draughts. They were probably a consideration for me and not normal fixtures. There was no SPCA, PETA, or Greenpeace and animals were just animals — things to be used. If I hadn't fallen into Chihirae's hands I could've wound up in some place like this.
     After the wild pigs were brown bears. Then foxes and ibex and deer. A larger cage held examples of what looked like miniature horses. Wolves paced back and forth in another followed by jackals. And then...
     I stared, a bit confused. They were big cats of some kind, but not one I could pin a name on. There were a pair of them, lurking in the back of their enclosure. Their ragged fur was grey and tawny. They had hunching, muscular shoulders and forequarters and smaller hinds, reminding me a little of hyenas. Their heads were big, broad, with impressive fangs and glaring eyes.
     "Ah," Hedia noted me staring. "They are impressive, a?"
     "They look a little like Rris!" Rraerch exclaimed. "What are they?"
     "The life-studiers have called them [large northern feline-type], but Broad Jaws is easier. I'm sure Mikah knows about them."
     "Actually," I said, "I don't recognize them."
     "No?" One of the beasts slunk forward and gave us a growling hiss. There was something odd about the front paws.
     "No," I said. "It's... it does remind me of an animal that lived a long time ago where I come from. Smilodon, I think. But that looks... different."
     "How so?" Chaeitch asked.
     I shrugged. "The teeth aren't as big. And it is shaped differently. But... there was no animal like that in Europe where I come from, I know that. Did you find others like it?"
     There were a couple of other samples of feline-like creatures in the menagerie, but they also differed from anything I'd known back home. There were some similarities, but nothing like the range of smaller animals. Was that something to do with whatever had caused the Rris evolve in the direction they had? How had those changes rippled through life on earth?
     We exited through another door. Outside there were corrals and open pens where larger animals were kept. There were moose and species of other deer. There were also things like huge buffalo with enormous, sweeping and horns and shaggy pelts standing in the drifting snow.
     The next building along was almost identical to the first. Same brick and stone and bars. Inside it smelled the same, had the same atmosphere. In the first cage a jackal scurried away into the rear enclosure. Then there was an impala or perhaps a gazelle. Warthogs. Things like flattened badgers snarled at us. A young zebra and hippo were in adjoining cages. Then there were a pair of baboons huddled in the back of their cage, blinking at us. Then there were...
     I thought they were chimpanzees at first. They were apelike. They were long-limbed and covered in black hair and the eyes were almost human. But when they moved the differences became clear. The legs were too long, the torso smaller.
     "What the fuck?" I murmured.
     "Friends of yours, Mikah?" Chaeitch chittered.
     They were apes, but like the felines in the other building they weren't something I'd seen before. One of them grinned at us from a chimp-like muzzle, the other scooted closed to the bars, knuckling over. It — he--extended a hand. The palm was black, creased, and vaguely similar to mine, but the fingers were much shorter, almost like awkward paws that flexed as he made a movement that might have been a beckon.
     "Don't!" Hedia cautioned. "Stay back. They are dangerous."
     The ape waved another couple of times, then the lips fleered back from incisors that dwarfed a Rris' and he screamed and started shaking the bars. They rattled and the Rris all took a step back.
     "Not anyone I know," I said, feeling... off-balance, surprised, and unaccountably embarrassed. Like trying to explain an uncultured relative. "I mean, I don't know what that is."
     "An ape?" Chaeitch said.
     "Not one from where I come from," I said, slowly shaking my head. The ape, the hominid, was grinning. It was familiarly disturbing. Was that what Rris saw?
     "Like that other one," Chihirae said. "So that broadjaw and these are different from your world?"
     "Looks like it," I said.
     "I thought you said your home was like ours."
     "A," I said. "Very much so. Except for..." I waited.
     "Rris." Chihirae got it first. She didn't even look at me for confirmation. "And your kind. And the broadjaws and these are different here. That is an interesting correlation."
     I nodded, still staring at the cage. The hominids, perhaps a distant relative who'd climbed the wrong tree, retreated to the back of the cage and glared at us. The features were simian, but through Rris eye perhaps they were also similar. The differences I saw were in the brow, the prominent and muscular jaws. I remembered a tale told to me by a former Rris tutor about apes in Africa. It hadn't been a pleasant story.
     "So, they are you?" Chihirae ventured.
     In the cage a hominid grimaced at us. There were bones on the floor.
     "Mikah?" Chihirae asked again, her eyes flicking between me and the caged specimens. Was she thinking about the last night? About us?
     "A," I said reluctantly. "They are what... we might have been."
     "All of them?"
     "I think so."
     Hedia scratched at her muzzle, looking somewhat puzzled. "What does that mean?" she asked. Chihirae opened her mouth, probably realized it was the lord's advisor asking her and hastily closed it again.
     Chaeitch cocked his head at Chihirae. "You understand? You should explain," he said.
     She looked panicked for a second, then stood up a little straighter. "Mikah's world is like ours, but there we didn't rise to awareness. His kind did. Conversely, here we became aware while his kind didn't. I would reason that would mean that on each world the species that didn't become aware became something else. That," she indicated the cage, "is what Mikah's kind, or their remote descendants, became here."
     Hedia mused for a few heartbeats. "Well encompassed, teacher."
     "Thank you, ma'am."
     "Ah Rihey," Hedia turned to me . "Would that mean that on your world there are creatures that might have been Rris?"
     "Umm," it was my turn to hesitate. That question was heading into territory that could lead to embarrassment and more serious problems. But by denying it, that could also cause trouble further down the line. That, and make Chihirae look bad. I nodded.
     "A," I said. "I think so. There is a slight resemblance. Like there is with those."
     Chaeitch snorted. "A slight resemblance? A quick shave and they could be going to evening meal in your stead."
     "Hey!" I snapped my fingers and Hedia blinked. "Not a bad idea. I could go off and enjoy myself while they do all the work. But, guys," I addressed the hominids in the cage, "you might want to keep conversation simple for this one. He's a little slow."
     The things that might have been human barked and showed teeth.

I think the whole menagerie business embarrassed Hedia. I didn't know who came up with the idea or even why they took us there and showed us those exhibits, but I think someone hadn't fully thought it through. When Hedia realized that things were getting awkward for both sides she hustled us away and through the rest of that private zoo. While she didn't offer outright apologies, I got the impression she was trying to get an unexpected mistake behind us and forgotten as quickly as possible.
     How did the Rris take it? The Mediator was as inscrutable as ever. Chaeitch seemed to be amused by it, and Rraerch had questions. Chihirae... she was quiet. I found myself wondering if she was seeing me in those things, or perhaps vice versa. Was she rethinking things?
     For me it had been a little weird and a little disturbing and a little embarrassing. It'd shone light on things that might not be so good for me. It'd answered some questions, opened others. Was that type of hominid all there were? There'd been baboons, what about other great apes? Was there anything further along the evolutionary ladder? Did other great cats exist here? Or were vicious apes filling that niche and there were other variants of the broadjaws filling the roles of the great apes?
     We departed the menagerie on foot, leaving the compound behind us at the end of trail of prints in the snow. She led us away along a path winding through the frozen palace grounds. The track was paved, with cast iron lamp posts every about fifty meters, and apart from a fresh dusting it was mostly clear of snow. Stands of evergreens bowed under snowy crowns while deciduous branches were bare and bleak. A poached egg of a late afternoon sun hung low behind a pearly haze, its light flat and drab. The occasional perennial armored guard sprouted in unobtrusive locations, reminding me that we weren't exactly alone.
     Hedia talked as we walked, pointing out points of interest: a grove planted by some kind hundreds of years ago over there, an ancient carved stone here, a circle of statues, a frozen fountain, a lattice of overgrown rusting iron that Hedia told us were the reworked remains of the weapons taken from a bastion.
     To my eye the grounds still looked unkempt. Like a patch of wilderness someone had put a fence around. That was deceptive. The Rris spent a great deal of effort ensuring their grounds were the way they preferred them. Like an English lawn that might've been painstakingly tended for three hundred years, these wild-looking meadows and copses were carefully arranged. Back in Shattered Water I'd seen some of the efforts their grounds keepers went to and the time scales they worked to. When you adjusted your perspective, they were indeed... impressive.
     The path followed the foreshore of a small lake, turned to a field of frosted ice. Like the rest of the grounds the shoreline was precise wilderness, every little cove and jut of land sculpted to not look ended. Ice beaded on rushes. Willows dipped toward the hard surface. A bronze statue of a ragged Rris stood sentinel on a rock there and Hedia was enthusiastically relating the history of the piece. The words drifted by me.
     How much like those hominids did they think I was? Was there actually a purpose for taking us there? Were they seeing how they would react? How I would...
     "Sir?"
     I came back to the now. I'd stood woolgathering while the others had moved onward. They were looking back at me.
     "Something wrong?" Chihirae asked.
     I shook my head. "No. Nothing wrong. Just..." I gestured at the monochromatic landscape. "It's beautiful."
     For the tiniest moment Hedia's expression was unreadable, then she inclined her head.
     "Thank you, sir."
     I sighed a white cloud. "And where are we going?"
     "Ah, there, sir," she said, pointing off ahead of us to where a roof was just visible through the trees.
     The royal hunting lodge was part of the palace grounds. Well, I translated what Hedia called it a lodge. I suppose you could consider a place with about fifty rooms a lodge if your other home is a palace. The ground floor was dominated by a huge living space opening onto a terrace overlooking the lake. There were kitchens and pantries. There were three wings with the bedrooms and private living areas. Servants' quarters were up under the eaves. Polished wood and brass were everywhere. The rugs on the floors were pieces of art worth more than many villages would earn in a year and the paintings on the walls could have graced any gallery.
     "You have heard of the Lakehouse Collection, sir?" Hedia asked me.
     "I'm afraid I have not," I said.
     "Ah," she inclined her head. "Not many have. It's a specialized collection. Not something many artisans know of. Some who do debate whether it is artwork at all, but his lordship thought you might be interested in seeing it."
     A closed cabinet contained the collection. I'd thought they were just little statues of various metals when Hedia opened the doors. There were shelves of the little things, dozens of them, none larger than a fist. Birds: all sorts of little birds crafted from copper or silver or even steel. Some sparkled with inlaid jewels or gleamed with gold, others were plainer, but all were etched and sculpted to great detail. The feathers looked almost three dimensional.
     From another cabinet Hedia took a box. It was wooden, about the size of a thick book, and of rosewood so smoothly polished that it was like a block of mixing paints frozen in a moment. There were some metal prongs on top. Hedia settled a figurine, a copper owl, onto them. It clicked into place. A key went into a slot. The faintest clickings as she wound it were almost musical.
     The feathers on those figurines looked almost three dimensional because they were three dimensional. They moved. They all moved. Each of the little automatons had a range of motions they went through, fluffing up feathers, opening and closing wings. Owls turned their heads and blinked jeweled eyes. A gannet waved a silver fish. A cardinal preened ruby feathers. Some of them sang, piping reedy little songs from accordion lungs. All clockwork.
     Each like an animated Faberge egg.
     "I have heard of these," Chaeitch said after a while. A long while in which the only noise had been the tinkerbell cascade of precisely delicate mechanisms. When he spoke his voice was oddly hushed. "By a different name though. Mostly rumors. They don't do them justice."
     "Rumors?" Chihirae asked.
     "A," Chaeitch said. "I don't know the full story. What I know is the Clockmakers Guild had a royal commission, for a mechanical toy. An owl. Their best artisan was set to work and produced a masterpiece. She didn't stop."
     "Why?"
     "The guild was reluctant to talk about that," Hedia said. "It was not deemed... proper. But she produced these," she waved at the cabinet, "over the rest of her life."
     "What wasn't proper about it?" I asked.
     Hedia looked startled. Perhaps that wasn't the sort of question people asked. She hesitated, flicked an ear. "There were rumors of insanity. [Obsession]. No details, just rumors. The Clockmakers Guild denied them, but she kept making these."
     I didn't know if they were staring, but I was sure I could feel eyes on me. I didn't look. "That sounds familiar," I said.
     "Your kind as well?" Hedia asked.
     I hadn't meant it that way, but now she mentioned it. "A. There's quite a history of similar things amongst our artists. Wonderful things made by people who think differently."
     She waved a graceful acknowledgement and inclined her head. "Well, sir, if you desire you are welcome to take one."
     Now I didn't know what to say. I looked at the ranks of glittering little marvels and I have to say I was tempted. "No," I eventually choked out. "Thank you, but... that wouldn't be right."
     If she was relieved by that answer she didn't show it in any way I could see. She simply inclined her head. "Very good, sir."
     "You sure?" Chaeitch said to me. "One of those would be an impressive addition to any collection."
     "You just want to take it apart to see how it works," I chided. He waved a shrug and I shook my head. "No, it's a collection. It shouldn't be broken up. Hedia, thank his lordship for the most generous offer, but I have to decline."
     "Yes, sir," she said. "I will ensure he knows. Now, if I may, it may be wise to continue on to the palace. You will have time to prepare before dinner and your guest are ready."
     "Sounds good," I nodded.
     "I could eat," Chaeitch volunteered.
     "And in other shocking news, fire is hot," I said and then frowned as her words registered. "Wait. My guest?"
     "Yes, sir," she said.
     I racked my memory and came up blank. "Uh, remind me: which guest would this be?"
     Hedia cocked her head. "The one you invited, sir. Aesh Myri."
     I trundled through a few more mental gears until it clicked. "Oh," I said. "Her."

The path meandered on back to the palace, wending through inhuman aesthetics and landscaping. The sun was going and lamps along the path had been lit, dotting the way with tiny oasis of orange light. It started snowing again.
     I had time for a hot shower, to wash and warm up.
     "So, who is this special guest you don't recall inviting?" Chihirae asked from the dimly lit swirls of steam as she watched me.
     "I did invite her, I guess," I said over the sound of water. "We talked at that reception the first night. She's a... guest from Overburdened. A king's daughter. We talked and I said something about agreeing to having a meeting with her at some time. It was all... vague."
     "You didn't expect it to be so soon?"
     "Ah, no."
     She laughed. "I think she grabbed the opportunity with both hands."
     "Yeah. I should've thought of that. And I was thinking tonight would be a quiet dinner."
     "Huhn," Chihirae cocked her head, stood with elbow on arm and thoughtfully scratched at her chin with a foreclaw. "You did agree to the arrangement, albeit carelessly. Consider it a lesson."
     "A," I sighed, fumbling with the dollop of gritty Rris soap.
     "You said she's a highborn from Overburdened? She's [syhaik], a?"
     I stopped scrubbing. "I've heard that word before," I said. "I don't know if there's an exact version in my words. I was trying to figure out if it's hostage or gift or obligation."
     "Yes," Chihirae said.
     "All of those?"
     "Most likely she's given by Overburdened. So she is a hostage, of sorts, but also imposes obligation on Bluebetter."
     "It's a bad thing?"
     She waggled a shrug. "It can be polite. It can be a gesture of respect or a tool for peace. It can be a way to get youngsters out to see the way the world, business, and politics work."
     "A lesson," I said.
     "A," she agreed. "Or, perhaps a way to get trouble out from underfoot."
     I grinned into falling water. "I think I've already got an idea which one it was."
     She was ready to hand me a towel as I stepped out. "You think she's trouble?"
     "I think she does whatever she can to get what she wants."
     A chitter in the warm gloom. "Sorry," she said, looking anything but. "That can be fun."
     "You can leave that out tonight," I grumbled as I toweled off. "Rot. I'll bet she'll be asking about our sex lives though."
     Now she snorted. "Mikah, just because that's all you ever seem to think about doesn't mean that others do.
     "You should talk," I retorted. "And she will."
     "Won't."
     "Will."
     "Bet?" she grinned.
     "You're on, little aesh Smart-Tail. And that reminds me: it was just going to be a quiet meal for us. Now she's turning up, that means there'll be a Mediator present, a?"
     She gestured yes. "I believe Rohinia is on duty."
     "So now it's a quiet dinner for four," I sighed. "Should I be dressing up for this?"
     Chihirae cocked her head and deliberately looked me up and down, smirked. "Unless you want her staring, I would suggest you wear something."
     "Like you?" She didn't seem to be going out of her way. She was just wearing a simple tunic. Practical. Kept food out of the fur. And vice-versa.
     She waved a shrug. "She's impinging upon another's hearth. She will take what she's given. But she probably knows you don't exactly stand on formality."
     So casual it was.
     The room was intended for receiving guests. Rris have their own name for it, but I internally labelled it as 'drawing room'. It was off the front antechamber and was quiet and comfortable. Lamplight drew gold highlights from the mellow glow white lacquer threw back. Powder blue drapes were drawn against the night. Chihirae had settled herself on a cushion and found the tray of chilled liquor the staff had set on the low table. She lapped delicately and blinked placidly at me. "You enjoyed today?" she asked.
     "Yeah," I said as I settled myself. Nothing as proletarian as a chair, just expensive cushions. "It was..." I started to say, then hesitated. "In truth, the menagerie was..."
     "Strange?" she volunteered.
     "A," I said, shrugged. "Kind of like having an unpleasant distant member of the family show up for dinner."
     She cocked her head and considered that. "Strange way of putting it."
     "You think?" It was something that just about any human would relate to. Here, not so much.
     That little conversation was laid aside as the door opened and the steward offered us a polite duck of the head. "Sir? Milady? Aesh Myri requests your hospitality."
     They were both looking at me. "All right. Please, Yeircaez, show her in."
     He withdrew and presently returned to usher Chieth aesh Myri in.
     She stepped through the door like a ghost in the dimness. A small figure of alabaster fur and sapphire eyes, a diaphanous kilt tie-dyed in butterfly patterns of blues and grays. Delicate silver links glittered around her neck, on her wrists. Very winter colors. Not precisely casual, but not ostentatious.
     "Ah Rihey," she sketched a graceful little bow. One to me, and then another to Chihirae, each precise and oozing sincerity and respect. "Your ladyship."
     Chihirae cocked her head and I think her expression was just a touch sardonic. "So, you're the one who [hustled] Mikah. Not many have that sort of nerve."
     "Ma'am," Chieth affected a shocked expression, ears wilting. "I assure you..."
     "It's okay," I interjected before either of them could get up to steam. "My decision. I did agree."
     "I do apologize, ma'am," Chieth said decorously. "I did want to meet with you. Both of you. Ma'am, you looked... [exceptional] at the ball. You shone in everyone's eyes."
     Chihirae snorted quietly, her ego saying more with a huff of air than words would, then lapped at her drink.
     I smiled, shrugged, and gestured to Chieth, to the cushions, "Have a seat."
     "Thank you, sir." She settled herself on my other side with effortless grace, sitting cross-legged and carefully setting a small wooden box on the table. Chihirae watched with half-lidded eyes. Not jealous, they weren't wired that way.
     And behind Chieth I caught the movement as Rohinia eased into the room, taking up an unobtrusive station. Our own personal censor.
     "I have to thank you for this consideration," Chieth was saying, her eyes glittering. Blue eyes on a Rris were... distracting. A color like purest glacial ice, but without sclera. And then there were the slit pupils that were just slivers of nothing set into the blue. "I wasn't sure your staff would honor your promise."
     "You seemed to convince them."
     "Not I," she said. "Your Mediator verified you'd made the promise. They respected that."
     "Ah," I nodded and looked at Rohinia.
     "She was very helpful," Chieth cheerfully continued. "She also mentioned you might have some time today."
     "Did she? I'll have to thank her for that."
     I think Chihirae might've caught the sarcasm there and smothered a smirk in a delicate lap of spirits. It went right by Chieth.
     "I'm certainly grateful," she said, "and I hope you will accept this for your consideration." She slid the little box over to me.
     "A box," I said. "Very nice."
     "Sir?" she looked surprised. "You... ah, open it."
     Chihirae lapped again, keeping her features very composed. "Oh," I said. "What will they think of next?"
     I opened it. There was jewelry in there. Several pieces of gold and azure set on a scrap of black velvet.
     "I understood that gifts are usual," she said.
     I looked at the little pieces, noted the tiny nicks and dings and pushed it toward Chihirae. She leaned forward and looked. Then she met my eye and gave a small shake of her head in a gesture she knew I understood and Chieth probably didn't.
     "I can't accept this," I said and pushed it back to Chieth.
     "Sir?" Her ears twitched back, her eyes widened. "You don't like them?"
     "They're yours, aren't they?"
     "Sir?"
     "Those. They are your own pieces? You want to give them to me because you think I want to be paid?"
     "Sir?" Again. "Sir, are you playing with me?"
     There was a sharp click as Chihirae rapped a claw on the table and the blue eyes twitched to the noise. "He might have been," Chihirae volunteered with a gesture toward me. "He does that — the more respect others demand the less they seem to get. But one thing he doesn't do is take advantage of people who can't afford it. You don't have to try and impress him."
     "I'm not..."
     "They're yours," I interrupted. "Perhaps a gift to you?"
     "Sir?" Confusion? Or a hint of panic?
     "They're not new. They've been used. A lot, from the looks of them. So they probably mean something to you — more than they ever would to me." I waved a shrug that she could read. "Anyway, that whole gift thing... someone gave me something expensive and now everyone thinks they have to. It's not necessary. Honestly, I'm running out of places to put rugs and fancy picture frames."
     "Oh," Chieth looked down at the little box between her hands. It was probably homemade, the jewelry inside something she'd brought from her home. Suddenly I had a clearer view of her: a girl trying to be older than her years; trying to be someone. She'd tried to impress using her own wits and resources, and to be honest she'd gotten further than most.
     "Don't misunderstand: thank you for the gift. The intention is impeccable and I appreciate that. But it isn't necessary. You just came here to talk, a? You don't need bribes to do that. So, tell me: what's Overburdened like?"
     Blue eyes blinked and flicked between me and Chihirae. Who chittered and smiled back. "Questions go both ways, a?"
     Chieth cocked her head, considering. Then waved a single gesture of agreement and some of the tension melted from her posture. "Overburdened? I think it is beautiful. There are forests and mountains stretching farther than one can see. The rivers are clear and cold. There are salmon, great schools of them in the spring. Herds of elk in the northlands. I think you would find it cold, though."
     "The capital is Broken Sun, a?" I asked. "A," she said. "A beautiful city. Huge and old. A center of the lake trade for hundreds of years." Broken Sun. I knew that name and didn't have any doubts Chihirae did too. What'd happened to her there wasn't something she'd soon forget. It'd been on Overburdened's territory and they'd loudly denied any involvement. Of course they had. Even when the smuggling chain had collapsed all the way back to the Bluebetter civil disturbances there hadn't been any success in proving otherwise.
     And why would they do something like that on their own turf? In their own capitol? Okay, perhaps it was all part of an elaborate double-blind, but complexity like that tended to come back around to bite you in the ass.
     So, odds were someone in Overburdened was involved, but not necessarily the nation itself. Odds were also pretty good that this young, wannabe-player wasn't involved.
     "You've seen Broken Sun?" Chieth asked brightly.
     I shook my head. And Chihirae drank. "No," I said. "Almost. There was a change of plans."
     "Unfortunate," she said and I glanced at Chihirae who met my eye. The girl didn't know. Nobody who had any inkling of what'd happened there would've asked something like that. "I know you'd be most welcomed. A guest of honor. And your safety would be guaranteed."
     Chihirae made a choking noise into her drink.
     "Not like here, a?" I covered.
     "Sir!" Chieth lowered her muzzle reproachfully. "Our hosts are most determined in their efforts. I'm sure they're doing the best they can."
     Chihirae was sitting quite still, staring down into the bowl she was holding in both hands. I didn't know what was going through her head, but that line of conversation had gone quite far enough. "Thank you, Ma'am," I said. "It's an attractive offer. I understand there are more than a few similar invitations out there and I'm sure there's one from Overburdened in there. I don't doubt I will be visiting sometime."
     "You don't think that perhaps it could be [expedited]?"
     "Politics seem to move at their own speed, a?"
     "And you can't do anything about that?"
     Over her shoulder I could see Rohinia stir slightly, an ear pricking up. I tapped a finger, considering how to answer that diplomatically. "I really don't think that would be wise. All the nations are as eager as you are to talk with me. As I can't be everywhere at once, turns have to be arranged. Judging from everything I've seen, arranging that does seem to be a very delicate process and interference might not be taken in good humor. How would your father react if he suddenly had a flood of angry demands from neighboring kingdoms wanting to know why he upset the process? He might not be overly pleased."
     That touched something. Her expression flickered. "I'm certain my father would be most pleased to receive you."
     Ah. I thought I saw what was driving her. But, I'd been wrong before. "Would he be so happy to have neighbors accusing him, perhaps doing something in response? I hear imposing added tariffs is a popular ploy."
     She hesitated and those blue eyes flicked from Chihirae to me. "That... wouldn't happen?"
     I looked past her. "Mediator?"
     "Ma'am," Rohinia rumbled, "nations have mentioned war in regards to access to Mikah, either wanting it for themselves or denying it to others."
     "Big load to put on his shoulders," I said quietly.
     I saw her take that in and finally sigh. "I must seem... foolish."
     "Young," I corrected. "I've done worse."
     "It's true," Chihirae offered. "He has."
     "Pay no attention to the rabble," I said, waving a dismissive hand. Chihirae hissed at me and then placidly sipped her drink.
     Chieth didn't move a muscle, but those blue eyes gave her away. I could see her pupils dilated, twitching as she tried to make sense of what was in front of her.
     "Relax," I told her. "I think that perhaps whatever you've been told about me wasn't exactly correct."
     "A," she carefully waved an affirmative. "I'm beginning to think that may be the case."
     I offered a restrained smile. "Happens a lot around me," I said and caught the movement from the corner of my eye as the steward nodded unobtrusively from the door. "Now. You're hungry and you've got questions. I think dinner's ready so we can deal with two problems at the same time, a?"

They brought the food to us. That was one of the perks of the job. The quiet, efficient staff set trays on the low tables before us. There were bite-sized chunks of meat, of flat bread. Steaming-hot small pies of meat and pastry. Kebabs of dripping cuts and roasted sweet potato. Some dangerously feral cheeses and paté. Jellied hare. Sweetmeats, cubes of liver and tongue. Slices of orange and mango. And more meat. They knew I wasn't such a carnivore, but old habits die hard.
     We talked. Of course Chieth watched me. She tried to be unobtrusive about it but I could see her eyes following my hands, watching me chew. And of course she asked about my background. I repeated my story and she listened attentively. I tried asking her about her home and she gave me some snippets of information, but always dragged the subject back to my history. What was my home like? Were there big cities? How could there be that many people? How could you feed them? How could you farm for them? Where they like Rris?
     Questions, questions, questions. The Mediator had to rumble a warning a few times.
     She asked about the clothes Chihirae had worn at the ball. Were they from my world? Why hadn't I worn anything like that before. We really had different clothes for males and females? Had I suggested them for her? How had Chihirae found what they looked like? Plays from my world? How was that possible? Could she see those? And if I had an interest in theater, did I know anything about the new play showing in town?
     "New play?" I asked. "We did see one today."
     "The Beast of Three Birds Fall?" she asked. "I have heard it is strikingly different."
     My neck prickled. Chihirae flinched and stared at me, her pupils dilating. Chieth missed it. I swallowed. "The... what?" I asked.
     "Beast of Three Birds Fall," she said.
     "I... don't believe that was it."
     "No? I've heard it's popular."
     "Ahh... It is a name I've heard before. What is it about?"
     "Huhn," she paused, a chunk of dripping meat speared on a small fork. There were pink spots in the white fur around her mouth. "I believe it's about a remote inn. There are intrigues. Bandits. Plotting. Murder. And a slaughter in the night."
     "And a beast," I heard someone say. I think it was me.
     "And a... beast..." she trailed off and the change of mood finally penetrated that young mind. She looked from me to Chihirae. "This... You know something about this?"
     "We were at that inn," Chihirae said quietly. "There was an incident."
     Chieth ears went down. "Sir..." she stammered and her jaw twitched as she obviously hunted for words. "I apologize. I didn't know... it wasn't my intent..."
     "'Beast'?" I asked. "Really? Rohinia? You knew abut this?"
     "No," he said from his station. "Is it surprising?"
     "A little, yes," I said, a bit stung. "Rumors from that spread this far? How did they... That minstrel," I recalled, snapped my fingers. Chieth jumped like I'd lit a cracker off.
     Rohinia cocked his head. "Huhn. That might be possible."
     "Is there some law against that?" Chihirae asked.
     "Against writing plays? Ma'am, we would be very busy."
     "Not your juris-my-dick-tion, a?" I said, mostly to myself. And sighed. "I'm a little surprised that such a play would be allowed. The government might be a little... touchy about such things."
     "You're assuming it portrays you badly," Chihirae said between nibbles at a rib.
     That stopped me. I considered that point for a bit, then said, "After what happened, after what he saw, do you think it's likely to be otherwise?"
     Her eyes and ears both turned down as she gnawed at the bone.
     "You could always go and see it and judge for yourself," Chieth suggested.
     I looked at Chihirae. She waved the bone philosophically: "Just asking for permission to do that could be a whole evening's entertainment in itself."
     "You think they'd deny you?" Chieth seemed surprised.
     "I think there would be a lot of noise about it," I said. Shrugged. "But... couldn't hurt to try."
     "Ah," Chihirae agreed, licking her jowls as she relentlessly hunted down another rib.
     "Sir?" Chieth was considering something besides the piece of meat on the fork in front of her. "Sir, if the play is... offensive towards you..." she trailed off, looking for the right words.
     "Then his lordship might not be pleased it was brought to my attention?" I finished.
     She didn't flinch, but I saw her pupils open, narrow again. "That is possible," she conceded.
     "I'd prefer to know something is out there," I said. "That play is popular? I think I'd want to know what it's saying about me before someone surprises me. Again."
     "A," she said, a decidedly noncommittal noise.
     "If this play slanders Mikah then not only his lordship will be unhappy," Chihirae said and paused, cocked her head. "I think I would not like to be the playwright."
     "A," Chieth quickly agreed. "However, I do hope it turns out to be something more imaginative. Some of the stories I've heard about you are most entertaining. It's true you were poisoned at a formal dinner?"
     "A."
     "And his lordship knocked you down at another?"
     "It wasn't... A. Sort of."
     "And what happened in Blizzards Fall? You dove from a ship in the harbor?"
     I hesitated. "You heard about that?"
     For a second she looked amused. "A busy port full of sailors. You can be sure that by the next light the story was everywhere. But what were you doing?"
     "Saving my life," Chihirae said. Clearly and succinctly, without looking up from her dinner.
     "Oh," Chieth said and her ears flicked back. "Huhn," she said. Then, "That is the reason why you stay with him?"
     It took a second for my brain to process that. I gaped, shocked, then began to gather myself for an indignant retort.
     "And you were doing so well," Chihirae murmured quietly and just gestured no at me. "Calm down, Mikah. No. That isn't the reason. Mikah, it is an... understandable question."
     The white-furred girl had just looked a little puzzled. "That wasn't something I should have asked?"
     "By his standards, I think not," Chihirae said.
     "Oh." She studied me uncertainly. "Then what..."
     "We each have our reasons," Chihirae said, in a steady tone I'd heard her use to explain something to a child who didn't quite understand. "They are different reasons. To each of us the other's reasoning is... odd. But we are living with them. If we don't stare too closely they become... not meaningless, but perhaps not so important."
     Chieth did sit for a few moments, digesting that. "Ma'am, I'm afraid I do not understand."
     Still stung, I said, "When you live it, you do. Eventually. Maybe."
     She considered. "You say you don't really understand each other, but yet you stay with each other. There is no [obligation]?"
     "Not of the usual sort," Chihirae said.
     "And you are sexual with each other?"
     There was a gentle chiming noise in the sudden silence: Chihirae tapping her gnawed bone against a bowl. She gave me a look that said things she didn't. "We are."
     "There are stories..."
     "A," Chihirae sniffed. "There are stories. That's all they are: stories. We have sex. It's not what people might consider usual, but it is quite consensual. Also, it's quite enjoyable — he has some unusual talents in that area. Also, it's something he also does not like talking about for equally odd reasons. Also, that expression on his face right now is, I believe, an insufferable smirk because I seem to have lost a minor wager which he won't let me forget in a hurry."

"Told you," I told her as I shrugged out of my tunic.
     Chihirae didn't even look up from where she was splayed out on my bed, a shaggy comforter in the gloom. "And now you think you're clever, a?"
     "Don't have to be when everyone asks the same question. Makepeace and Hiesh and her. Not unpredictable."
     A chitter. "I've told you: if you weren't so reluctant to talk about it they wouldn't consider it such a prize to stalk. Because it matters to you they think it's important."
     I shook my head as I folded my clothes, but those words troubled me. Important? Why? Did they think they were going to get something out of it? God only knew what skewed impressions and misinterpretations of my psychological makeup were floating around out there. Did they think it was a way of getting some leverage over me? Or was it me who was over-thinking the whole thing?
     I hung my pants up and asked, "You enjoyed yourself today?"
     "A," came the immediate response. "It was a good day. You?"
     "A," I said as I slipped under the comforter beside her and idly stroked a handful of pelt. My truncated little finger twinged a bit. "Some relaxation. A play and some of the finer things. Visiting distant family members. A nosey dinner guest. A good day."
     A chitter. "A pity we can't do it more often."
     "A. I'd like to see that play she mentioned. See what it's about."
     "Huhn." I felt a twitch of tension under my hand. "You sure about that?"
     "What do you... you think it would be that bad?"
     "I don't know." She stirred, rolling over. "Can't say for certain, but there's a chance it's... you know."
     "A," I sighed.
     "What about her?" she asked after a few moments. "Did you... what did you think of her?"
     Now it was my turn to say, "I'm not sure. She seems sincere enough. But..."
     "But?"
     I scratched at her fur as I thought. "Little questions or requests. Not much. But each one... awkward."
     "You noticed."
     "A. Why? I mean, was it deliberate?"
     A soft exhalation in the dark. "I think... She's young. I think somewhat [bitter]?"
     I thought back to what she'd told me that night of the party, out on the terrace. "That might be right."
     "She would be looking for [something]. To [fulfill] that she might do what she thought her sire would want. To prove herself, a?"
     I scritched idly, moving my hand around. "Perhaps make waves for us in Bluebetter? A bit of sabotage? Make things a bit difficult for us here?"
     "Huhn," she rumbled. "I think I really couldn't comment."
     "Does she seem like that sort to you?"
     Another laugh. "Mikah, she's possibly a candidate. I'm a country school teacher. I teach my charges reading and writing and numbers. Candidates are taught to manipulate cities and countries."
     "Huh, so she is that sort then."
     She considered that. "Do you think, then... Do you think she may have been involved in... with what's been going on?"
     That thought jolted me. I stared up at the ceiling. "I think you would be able to tell better than I. She might have the... capacity for it, but I doubt she has the position or influence. But, I think that you're right in that she's trying to prove something."
     I felt her ribs rise and fall as she sighed. "She's young. Mikah, to her this might be a game."
     I grimaced. "More of those."
     "A. And you know these people don't like to lose."
     Under my hand she felt warm, relaxed, but I still had to ask, "You're worried about them?"
     "Mikah, someone was killed in my room and there don't seem to be any answers about that forthcoming."
     "A," I conceded.
     "And I have to wonder why it was my quarters," she continued, breathing slowly and steadily.
     "Perhaps they got lost," I suggested, lamely. "They made a mistake?"
     A chitter. "Mikah, they make it all the way into the palace and make the mistake of entering the wrong room? But they did find us, didn't they. There was the one who was watching us in your room. They could have shot then."
     I bit my lip as I considered that. It was... scary. "Perhaps two different groups at the same time?"
     "Rot, that sounds like a comedy of errors in a cheap playhouse."
     "Or there's someone looking out for us."
     "Huhn." I felt her snort derision as she found that unlikely. "And who would that be? I'm sure our hosts would let us know if it were them."
     "Another faction, then," I said.
     "Not Land-of-Water. Not Bluebetter. Not Guild. Rot." She sighed, a sound of weariness.
     "Then perhaps someone did protect us," I pointed out. "It'd be nice to think that not everyone is trying to hurt us."
     "A," she said quietly. "But I keep thinking: what would have happened if I'd still been in my room?"
     "Perhaps our protector would've helped you."
     "Perhaps." She didn't sound convinced.
     I stroked quietly for a few seconds. "Do you want to stay here tonight?"
     "I think so. A," she said and then growled, "Sleeping, I think. You didn't have other plans?"
     I smiled at the twilight. "No. Sleep sounds good. You want to come under here?"
     "Too hot," she rumbled. "Besides, here you can scratch my back. Higher... Ahh, like that..."
     I really don't know who dozed off first, her or my hand.

More days, more meetings.
     We had tours of more physical locations such as foundries, metal and workshops, factories and mills. There was another meeting with Ah Fe'techi of the Weavers Guild. We toured one of their mills — a warehouse-sized space filled with spinning drive belts and the deafening clatter of hundreds of looms rocking back and forth. He asked me about the feasibility of upgrading to steam power from their current water-powered system. I told him what I'd told others who'd asked me the same question: if it was doing a satisfactory job, then don't — steam would most likely end up costing more in fuel. They gave me a gift of a waistcoat like the one I'd admired at the ball.
     And there were trips that were more research-oriented. I spent a headache-inducing afternoon trying to talk mathematics with Rris who were a lot more adept at that sort of thing than I was. They were toying around with high-level theory that's as far removed from what most people consider real numbers as a kindergarten's building blocks are from structural engineering.
     More evenings, more receptions.
     Receptions. Not parties. I like parties. Parties are fun. Formal receptions however, now those are something else wearing a party's skin. Zombie parties. Partisites. The idea of those things isn't to have fun — they have their own rules and protocols and, more importantly, they're a place to meet and greet and do business. More specifically, deniable business. It's a time and place where agreements are made, relationships are formed, plans are hatched, and it's all informal. Off the record.
     The first couple of nights were soirees at Guild halls. They were restrained, unimaginative affairs held in big, old halls hung with the Rris equivalent of heraldry and guild history. Each night I circulated through a crowd of lords and dignitaries and moguls and hangers-on. The Mediators lurked like a pair of angry clouds, there to rain on whomever stepped out of line. So I kept my face calm and made small talk with the captains of industry. In turn, their reactions varied from calm composure to professional brown-nosing to thinly veiled hostility that I could feel coming off them like a hot wind.
     If the authorities were looking for people out to get me, there certainly didn't seem to be any shortage of them.
     I had wondered what the point of those receptions was. With the Mediators present and crowds pressing around any chance of talking business was slim to none. I asked. It wasn't about that, Rraerch explained. It was about appearances. Our hosts were influential enough that they were able to show off the hottest trend in the kingdom.
     I don't know what I resented most — being paraded around like a trophy or having time wasted like that.
     The third night was something different. Our carriages rocked their way through dark streets and falling snow and drew up outside a brightly lit residence. It was a town house set right in the heart of the city, and not a small one. Through the usual gateway and entry tunnel was a private cobbled courtyard, and surrounding that were the three stone stories, the rows of big windows throwing out pools of warm light through which falling snow swirled. Music was playing somewhere, audible above the surf-on-shingle noise of Rris voices as we got out of the coaches.
     I'd been told it was another reception for a lord, and that was all. Someone who valued their privacy more than usual. No names. But, a private residence of that size, in the city, meant that whoever owned it wasn't small-fry.
     The lights were on. There was a band somewhere. And it wasn't quite as crowded as I'd anticipated. I'd been expecting our small party to be mobbed as we walked in the front door, but the pair of stewards there just bowed us through — myself, Chaeitch and Rraerch, and Rohinia as our Mediator escort.
     Inside was money. Clean gas lamps in milky glass globes were burning everywhere. Rooms were large and high and cold, decorated in pale marble and gilt. Art was... sparse — not ostentatious displays of knick-knacks like the back shelves of some antique store, but a severe elegance of singularly precious artefacts strategically positioned. One would encounter the occasional little time-darkened paintings — mounded impasto coated with crazing craquelure set in simple frames. There were small busts of pocked bronze. Tapestries hung alone, their colors brilliant against stark white walls. Carvings in niches had every detail across their surfaces animated in the wavering illumination of oil lamps. There were books on pedestals — single books that were little more than bits of vellum between worn covers. Servants percolated through the halls bearing trays of finger food and drinks. None of it cheap.
     Rris moved sedately through the house in small groups, talking quietly and seriously amongst themselves. Not as many as I'd expected, but those who were there were... important. Some I'd met before. From others I got that familiar wide-eyed shock-of-the-new look. Ah Fefthri, the land-of-water ambassador, was there for his greetings and introductions and inquiries as to how I was finding things. Ah Yaershish was there, just making careful small talk, along with Guild leaders I'd met before: Banking Guild, Merchant Guilds, Advisors and high courtiers, Lords and Ladies from Guilds and nobility. Lords of old, established stock and relatively few of the new-money industrial figures.
     But they didn't pressure or crowd me, instead petitioners stopped by at opportune moments. I felt as if there'd been a memo that everyone but me had received.
     Someone knew how to organize these things.
     I went with the flow, nodding and not smiling in the appropriate places. I did get a surprise when I rounded a corner and recognized someone — a smaller figure in simple attire engaged in conversation with a cluster of expensively-dressed older Rris.
     "Makepeace."
     She twitched around. "Oh. Good evening, sir."
     "What're you doing here?" I asked as I wandered over.
     I'm not sure if the look she gave me was reproachful or embarrassed. "I am the university representative, sir. I was invited as such."
     And did her hosts know she'd received that post in a ludicrous twist of fate? I smiled. "Of course. And they're looking after you?"
     Now she looked a little uncertain. As did the other Rris — a few exchanged glances. "If you are asking if they are being accommodating, then yes, sir, they are. Quite."
     "Good to hear," I said. "Business talk?"
     "Ah, yes sir." Her eyes flicked in the Mediator's direction. "University business."
     "Ah. Serious business," I said. "And I hope you're getting as good as you're giving." I deliberately met the others' gazes, each and every one of them and added, "I wouldn't want to think anyone was taking advantage of you."
     "Yes, sir," she said. "I mean, no sir. I mean... we have been exchanging some tales. Along the lines of what I was originally tasked with."
     I thought back. Remembered. "Any luck?" I asked without much optimism.
     She hesitated. "I... I think perhaps should discuss that later, a? Sir?"
     Did that mean she'd found something? Or was she just telling me she was busy and to go away. I gave the small crowd another look and nodded to her. "A. Alright. Please, stop by later and we can do that. And now, I think I had better... circulate?"
     "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
     As I left her to her business I was idly wondering what she was thanking me for. My own business kept me talking and moving through hallways, upstairs, along enfilades. There was a point on an upper floor when I made my excuses and stepped away from a conversation, around a corner and into a hallway of green carpet and wooden paneling. And was abruptly aware of how quiet it'd become. Rohinia was still behind me, but otherwise we were alone. That didn't feel right at all.
     "What's going on?" I asked, that apprehensive prickling crawling up my neck.
     He waved a hand in gesture that could be an affirmative, could be a reassuring gesture, could be ushering me along. "Everything is as it should be. Please, follow this gentleman."
     I turned around again and there was a Rris in attire that wasn't quite a servant's. "Sir, if you would come this way," that individual requested.
     I glanced at Rohinia, who seemed singularly unperturbed. "Go ahead," he said. Just down the hall to a door that wasn't any different from all the others. The servant ushered us in. The frame was high enough that I didn't have to duck. Inside was dimness and deep rugs and aged wood and sculpted gilt and plaster. Pipe smoke hung in the warm air, sweet and slightly cloying and not quite covering the animal-hair undercurrent of Rris. Coals were banked in a stove — a huge, bulbous thing of fancy cast ironwork and a wide-open door. The firelight didn't reach the far corners of the room but was enough to let me see the Rris seated around the hearth. Seven, eight of them on their cushions, low tables beside them.
     "Ah Rihey," one spoke. "Please, enter. Sit. We have some items to discuss. That will be all, Constable."
     A prickle ran up my spine. Rohinia turned to leave.
     "Ah," I interjected quickly. "Shouldn't there be a Mediator present."
     Rohinia paused. "That's the Red Leaves Guild Commissioner. Behave yourself, a?"
     The steward closed the door behind him and the faint strains of alien music were gone. My eyes adjusted, but it was still difficult to make out features and faces. Was that deliberate? Or perhaps they just didn't care. I felt my guts clenching and tried to hide the unease, quite aware they were watching as I carefully seated myself on the extra cushion. Several pipes glowed softly. Fragrant smoke curled in the air. There were small porcelain cups on the tables, overlapping moisture rings on the glossy surfaces. They'd been here a while.
     "You would be ah Rihey," one of them said. "Thank you for attending."
     I looked around and ventured a careful smile that I was sure didn't hide my nervousness. "I don't see how I could have stayed away. What is this?"
     "A face to face meeting," the Rris said. That was the one Rohinia had labeled as the Commissioner. "A meeting with some of the more influential people in this city. People whose business [intersect] your business. People whose opinions... matter."
     By the salt and pepper in the whiskers most of them were older Rris. Male and female, I was pretty certain. Some thin, some stout, some stouter. Clothing was elegant. Not ostentatious, but well-made, expensive. These were folk who were wealthy and comfortable with it. Old money.
     "This is..." I started to say, then clenched my jaw. "Do my associates from Land-ofWater know of this?"
     A pause. "It is unofficial," someone supplied.
     I nodded, then asked. "Have we met before?"
     "A few of us have seen you. At other receptions."
     Seen. Not met. "Ah. I am not very good with Rris faces."
     "So we understand," one of the others said and there wasn't any regret in those words. "We don't expect you to know us, however we have been hearing a great deal about you. We thought we should have this meeting, away from other distractions, to try and understand this pebble that has been dropped into our pond."
     I nodded and again scanned faces, trying to read something there. Some hostility, curiosity, perhaps amusement, wariness, disdain, interest... I thought I picked up traces of all those. But on all those inhuman faces in bad light, I couldn't be sure.
     "Alright, so you say you have interest in my business?" I said.
     That one I'd taken to be the spokesperson waved a lazy affirmative. "In a manner. We have dealings in many fields, and we are most interested in how these... innovations you are promoting may affect those."
     "You mean, are you going to lose money," I translated.
     There was a pause. I saw teeth glint and I'm sure there was a chitter. That spokesperson looked around and eventually said. "A... singularly straightforward way of putting it, but yes."
     "Ah," I said and settled back. "Yes. That seems to be a fairly common subject of these meetings. So, how are you involved in these concerns. It's financially, yes, but in what way?"
     Eyes sparked and glittered as individuals exchanged glances. "It's complicated," the spokesperson said. "We — all of us — are of well-established affiliations. We've had influence in this city and its surrounds for a long time: since the early federations. Land and portage and trade and tariffs." He waved a dismissive gesture. "Details aren't important, but much of this city was built on what our predecessors founded. So we are determined that our interests be protected."
     Old money. Real old money. Lords and ladies sort of old. And if they were like humans in that regard the old money often didn't come from stocks and bonds, but from other forms of piracy and pillaging and plundering. Then, eventually, the brigands settle down and set rules and authority congeals around them and, eventually, they become the cornerstones of society. These ones might be some generations removed from their origins, but there were probably still claws under the plush.
     How determined were they? I thought back to attacks in the night. "The Commissioner is here to ensure the questions are appropriate?"
     "A. We understand that is required when talking with you."
     And they went with the master of the local Guild hall instead of my usual escort. I looked at the Mediator. "You've been in your position long?"
     He met my eye. "A year. I replaced my predecessor when she retired."
     I understood that. How many other Guild members 'retired' after the last year's fiasco? "Why you instead of Rohinia? I understand he's well thought of in the Guild."
     "A. An exemplary officer," the Commissioner replied. "But the request was made that I be here. To ensure there are no accusations of impropriety."
     "You often respond to such requests?" I asked.
     "No," he simply replied. "But I did want to see what all the fuss was about."
     Ah. I nodded. "Seems to be a lot of that going around."
     A glimmer of uncertainty was gone before I could be sure I'd seen it.
     "So," I turned back to my hosts. "What did you want to discuss?"
     "A few things," he said. "For example, there've been stories circulating about where you came from and what you're actually doing here. We would like to hear what actually happened, in your own words. Where do you come from?"
     "My world. Like this one, but instead of Rris, it's my kind."
     "Where is that?"
     "Where?" I laughed and waved a shrug. "I have no idea. My kind have a theory about every decision creating a universe where each option exists. Like a tree of time, branching as time proceeds. My kind is on one branch; yours on another. Somehow," I made a little gesture, "I went from my branch to this one."
     There was a stirring among the others. A snort. A mutter of, "Preposterous."
     "Madness?"
     A demand of, "How?"
     "Again, I have no idea. It was a theory. No-one ever proved it. Perhaps it was that. Perhaps I just... waited until the universe ended and then every universe after that until this moment arrived. I simply don't know. I was there, then I was here."
     "How do you get back?"
     "I don't," I said slowly and clearly, in case they hadn't gotten the message. "I have explained this many times. I am stuck here. I have no way home."
     "If your kind is like ours, how do you have this knowledge?"
     "Because my kind has been where your kind is now, perhaps a hundred years ago."
     "Then, you are from a future time?"
     "No. I think I didn't say that properly. I mean: over a hundred years ago our knowledge was like yours. Since that time we've learned new things."
     A pause. "Such as?"
     I shook my head. "Well, I can tell you that quicksilver and lead are poisonous — don't use lead pipes. There are different blood types. Lightning follows the easiest route to the ground. You're living at the bottom of an ocean of air. And air is not a single substance. Beyond things like that," I gestured toward the Mediator present, "you would have to ask the Guild."
     Another pause while they exchanged looks and expressions.
     "So these proposals of yours," one asked. "Like that rail line — they have been built?"
     "In my world, yes."
     "Did they work?"
     "A."
     "Were they successful?"
     "Very. They're still in use. There are rail lines a hundred years old still running. They're one of the most effective ways to move freight and passengers overland. The only way to move real amounts of goods overland."
     "Real amounts?"
     "As cities grow bigger they require more. Of everything. More food, more fuel, more materials. In and out."
     They Rris listened. Occasionally they sipped at drinks, puffed at pipes, but always weighed me. Different kinds of merchants.
     "Ships move a good deal."
     "A. Ships are very good at that, for coastal regions. But carrying goods inland? That can be difficult. And you might bear in mind that the engines required for such a rail would be better than those currently available. And they can also be used in ships."
     The scales adjusted accordingly.
     "What sort of readjustment would that make to trade?" one asked.
     "You would be able to say better than I can. I don't know your current volumes or rates, tariffs, taxes, all that. But a rail engine can haul a lot. Five times its own weight. Some of the larger engines from my world weighed about a hundred tons."
     They did the math on that.
     "That would be more cargo than a caravan could carry," I said. "From here to Shattered Water in days, not weeks. Certainly there would be adjustments, but you would be better able to tell what those would be."
     "Surely such amounts of cargo would flood any market," a pipe-smoker rumbled.
     "Those amounts of cargo would become normal," I said. "If you think about the amount of steel required for rails, for bridges and engines, not to mention the fuel and other supplies... It's substantial. Supporting such an industry with only local carts would be very difficult."
     "In order to receive this information we have to agree to use these new numbers?"
     "That is a request, a."
     "And Land-of-Water would be using this system?"
     "A."
     "And this would profit us?"
     I frowned. They were all watching me intently. Seemingly relaxed, but the ears were up and their eyes were flicking, following my slightest move. It was a loaded question. "I think you already know the answer to that. Land-of-Water is making it a condition on my recommendation. We have repeatedly stated our case and I believe it is quite clear. If you wish to decline our offer, then that's fine: we'll try elsewhere. But we won't try and start a project that's certain to face immense problems in the future due to something that could have been prevented now.
     "You ask how you can profit? I'd think that just the reduction in loss from complicated conversion rates and fees and tariffs would be a good start. Then, if the line is constructed, there'd be a lot of demand for labor, materials, and land. Beyond that, you'll find that if you make products that are entirely usable and fit with parts used in other countries, you open whole new markets.
     "Additionally, if you apply that thinking to other things, like crates and barrels... Consider crates that are a size that can be easily managed; that can fit perfectly in a ship's hold or warehouse without wasting space; that are the same everywhere so you can reuse them and not have to make new ones all the time. They can handle that flood of goods."
     They chewed on that.
     "You seem to be very sure of what will happen," one of them observed.
     "I'm not," I said. "I've said many times I don't know with certainty what will happen. I know what happened with my people, but I don't know how that will apply to Rris. You are different. You think and react differently. Where you take these ideas, that will be largely up to you."
     Shaggy heads moved and I heard low rumbles in the gloom. Ears twitched and again eyeshine flashed.
     "So there's a chance they could fail?"
     "A," I said. "There's a chance anything could fail. Like your signal system, a? The Hilltop Folly I believe it was called? Seems good enough on paper, but sometimes things don't work out quite as planned. Do they?"
     At least one of them twitched at that and I saw others cock their heads slightly. A sore point? But another simply waved agreement. "This is true. But obviously there is more than just a single commercial misstep at risk here. If... I emphasize that... your new numbers are agreed to, then there will be more than just the rails. You talk of new materials, metallurgical techniques, knowledge that will destabilize existing industries. Would the gain be worth the disruption?"
     "I would have to say yes," I said. "There will be disruption — I don't dispute that. But there will also be new... opportunities. If someone were knowledgeable and... got on board at the right time they would... would find rich hunting grounds. I believe that is the correct expression?"
     "Near enough," someone said. There was a low laugh.
     "And what sort of opportunities," one asked.
     I smiled carefully. "I believe Land-of-Water has placed a written proposal before his lordship that outlines exactly what would be offered in exchange for your consideration. For me to announce that before he does, perhaps that would be... impolite?"
     "So we have only your word on this?"
     I looked at that person. "Yes. You do. Just as the Mediator Guild has my word I would not discuss disruptive technologies. And as other parties in this undertaking have my word that I would not double-deal with others."
     "You think we are doing such?"
     "Is Land-of-Water aware of this little meeting?"
     My answer was a smoky silence.
     "Thought so," I said and shrugged. "The information you want will be released when the Guild and the palace clear it. I've given you my opinion and my advice, which, if you heed it, will be an advantage, but I've got enough troubles without being accused of inside-dealing."
     The response to that was a circle of amber eyes watching me. There were a few whispers, susurrus's of murmured asides.
     "You want to stand by your agreement to your patrons," one eventually said. "That is admirable. We also have a duty to our country. We're obliged to do what's best for our people. So, we take a potential disruption such as yourself very seriously. It will help us immensely to understand just what you mean for our city."
     "Uh-huh," I nodded, quite aware they probably wouldn't understand the gesture or sounds. What did impress me was that those lines had been delivered with a straight face. I'd dealt with enough salespeople that something like that triggered my bullshit detector, whatever the species.
     "It's reassuring that you feel that strongly about your civic duty," I said and then looked at the Commissioner. "Does the Guild feel as strongly about information like this being passed through informal channels?"
     He was just sitting, quietly following the conversation without adding anything. But his expression was that blank slate that the other Mediators I'd known had assumed in their dealings with me. He turned that look on me and I couldn't be sure if he just didn't want to give anything away or of he was hiding something.
     "The Guild," he said, "is following its charter. Their esteemed lordships have the right to enquire into issues that may have [something] effects on their interests."
     "Ah," I nodded again and thought that through. The way he'd phrased it... was that deliberate? "Then I think that it's better than I don't cause any additional unrest by spreading information outside the agreed-upon channels."
     "You are refusing the Guild?" one of them asked. Amber eyes glowed through curls of sweet pipe smoke and I couldn't read the faces.
     "With respect, I believe I have the right to decline a request," I said. "I also don't believe the Guild is asking, are they?"
     The Commissioner didn't say anything. Neither did the others, but I saw some glancing his way, saw muzzles lowered, creased. In the shifting firelight a confusing mélange of expressions passed across inhuman faces: surprise and annoyance and puzzlement and amusement. Flitting around the group in split-second blinks of emotion.
     I nodded again and then hauled myself to my feet. Sitting Rris-fashion gets to you after a while. I hesitated, then sketched a bow to the conclave of twilit magnates still seated in their smoky circle. "My lords, perhaps if this meeting had been a little more... open we could have proceeded further. As things are I'm afraid that doing so would insult my hosts. So I will have to thank you for your time and bid you good night."
     No-one tried to stop me as a walked to the door and opened it onto the comparatively bright light of the hall outside. From behind came a low water-on-shale noise of Rris murmuring, cut off when I closed the door.
     Rohinia was out in the hall, waiting, a gray stormbird in his coat leaning against the wall. "I think we're done here," I said as I passed.

The snow was heavier, continuous flurries blotting out the sky, the clouds, the moon. Once we left the lights and music of the house behind, the streets were dark as pitch.
     "What happened to you?" Chaeitch asked after we'd departed the gate. Rraerch also looked more than a little curious.
     "Good question," I said. And looked at Rohinia. "That was a Guild stunt? For any particular reason? Or is that what you do on slow evenings."
     Rohinia cocked his head and took his time answering. "It was... required."
     "Oh. Required," I sighed. "This something to do with finding out who's behind those attacks?"
     "Something," he grudgingly admitted.
     "What?" Chaeitch and Rraerch chorused. "What happened?"
     "A little meeting," I said. "With some lords who wanted answers I wasn't allowed to give. That was it, wasn't it?"
     Rohinia didn't even twitch an ear.
     "And the Guild was there to see what the reaction was," I finished with a wild-assed guess. "That's right? A? No comment, a? Rot."
     I rolled my neck, feeling stiffness in my shoulder where the cold made old torn muscles twinge. "You think the Commissioner learned something?"
     "The Guild Commissioner?" Rraerch interjected.
     "A, that's what they said," I said, suddenly suspicious. "Why?"
     "Mikah," she said, and her tone was that of a teacher I knew explaining something to a particularly dense pupil, "there is a reason he is the Commissioner: the Guild doesn't hand out such titles to incompetents."
     I had known Mediator Guild members who'd been wrong, who'd been misguided or misled or even corrupted, but none I could honestly called incompetent. Just... not-ascompetent-as-their-competitor, which resulted in a somewhat Darwinian org structure.
     "So he probably had a reason," Chaeitch said.
     I looked at the impassive Mediator and just waved an affirmative. I'd always known he had a reason, but I'd also seen that Mediators could be bent. So how could I be sure that he'd actually acted in my best interests? "Yeah," I conceded as I sat back and looked out at the foul weather brewing outside. "I hope it was a good one."

Dinner was over. Staff had gone, taking the remains of the meal with them. I sat, sipping heated wine and appreciating some precious quiet time. Gusts of wind rattled the study windows in their frames. Candle flames fluttered. Shadows twisted.
     "It was a bad day?" one of them eventually asked. Chihirae was at the door, not quite in the room. "Do you want company?" she ventured.
     "Please," I said. She almost scurried in, swept her tail around as she settled herself on the cushion and blinked at me.
     "So, was it?" she asked.
     "What makes you say that?"
     She snorted lightly and tapped her muzzle. "You have that look about you. And you smell worried. Angry. Distressed. It's distinctive."
     "Oh," I shrugged. "Just a... long, strange day. What about you? Just got back?"
     She gave me an 'oh, please' look at the amateurish diverting tactic. "Some time with Makepeace at the university. Many attempts to try and learn about you through me. The usual. Not as interesting as your day I'm guessing. Not too bad?"
     I shrugged. "Guild games and tricks. I think... I'd like to think they're trying to be helpful. But it would be even more helpful if they could actually tell us what their plans are."
     "Huhn," she winced. "Perhaps they're not sure who they can trust."
     "That's..." It was a good point. "That's disturbing," I said.
     An ear twitched. "A. But, they usually have a reason for what they do."
     "So I've been informed," I grumbled and knocked back my wine, down to the dregs. Winced at the lingering afterburn. It was distilled from grapes, so wine was the most appropriate translation. "And you're saying I smell?"
     She waved a shrug. "You always do. Just tonight it's... you're worried. It's... obvious."
     "Rot," I sighed.
     "It's not that bad," she hastened.
     I shrugged. "It's that," I said. "It's also... I had to talk with some powerful people this night. It's difficult enough that I'm trying to understand them. To know they can smell what my mood is... it's disturbing."
     Chihirae cocked her head. "Mikah, they might scent you, but knowing what those scents are is something else. I know your moods; I can tell you've been nervous, anxious, excited... but they would likely take it differently. A nervous beast in the same room? They might be as uneasy as you."
     "You think?"
     She fidgeted. An ear flicked. Then: "I remember a little room in Westwater," she said quietly. "It reeked of animal terror and pain and illness. It was... terrifying for me also."
     I stared at the little teacher sitting across from me. That was the first time she'd told me that.
     "I didn't know what it would do," she continued, chittered — a laugh that seemed more like a nervous reflex than amusement . "That was the most frightening — the unpredictability. I could smell something. I thought it was fear, but I didn't know for certain. I didn't know what it would do."
     "Oh," I said. "That's... You think they're like that?"
     Another quick chitter. "I'm not certain. But I know they can't be certain exactly what your moods are, despite what they scent. And if they're uncertain about that, then they'll be uncertain about what you might do. That is disturbing for them."
     I fiddled with my empty glass, considering.
     "That doesn't... upset you?" she ventured.
     "What?" I looked at her, looking decidedly uncertain. "Upset?" I asked and then had to laugh. "No. Actually, it helps. In a strange way."
     "Oh," she fluffed up a bit. "Then you're welcome."
     I had to smile. "I am surprised they can smell anything, with all the smoking they do."
     "You haven't considered that's why they smoke?"
     "Oh." I considered how that might conceal one's own cues. "I suppose that makes sense."
     She flicked an ear again. "And there are times when a wash would not go amiss," she said.
     I eyed her. "This being one of those times?"
     "Smoke, anxiety, tiredness... it's a noticeable," she waved a shrug.
     "Oh, thank you," I said.
     She chittered, a sound more like real amusement. "There are times your rain-room is a good idea. I can... do your back if you need assistance."
     "You know," I said, and the empty glass clinked as I set it down, "that's an offer I think I'll take you up on. After today I need a wash anyway."
     The washroom was cooler than the rest of the apartments, every sound pattering back from the tiles, but the water pouring down was hot. I ducked under the hot deluge, letting the stream hammer down on my shoulders.
     "You and Makepeace, you had something to talk about today?" I asked.
     "Aside from yourself, you mean?" Chihirae said as she poked a hand under the shower, testing the waters. "I am a teacher, you know. She's a student. We had quite a bit to discuss. Although, everybody else wanted to talk about you."
     "Your favorite subject, a?"
     A flash of teeth. "Always fishing for information and thinking they're being so subtle about it." She stepped into the shower. Water dappled her fur, soaking through. She twitched, all over, ears laying back. In a few seconds she was soaked to the skin — quite literally. I bit back a grin as she went from an elegant lady to a wet... cat.
     "You're not laughing, are you?" the sodden, suddenly-skinny cat-thing growled.
     "Not at all," I lied. "You weren't bothered too much?"
     She made a hurumph sound and leaned against me. Her fingers poked gently, stroked my wet skin. "Too polite. Or too scared. His lordship made sure they didn't pressure."
     "And him? He didn't pressure?"
     "Him? No. Mikah, I did ask... about that play. I said you had an interest in seeing it." "What did he say?"
     "He said he would investigate the possibilities. I think he had some concerns. That might not be a good thing."
     I rubbed fingers through water-logged pelt. There were parts down her front where the fur didn't lie as smooth as the rest — scars of her own there. "Huh, probably mean there would be some quick re-writing."
     She twitched. "You're not thinking of sneaking out?"
     I shook my head. "I think I've had enough of sneaking through towns. Anyway, if he's too reluctant there might be another way."
     "Get them to come to us?"
     I scratched behind her ears, where she liked it. "Perhaps if we ask nicely, a?"
     "I have my doubts about that working," she rumbled, leaning into the scratching. "That reminds me... there were some unusual questions today."
     "Unusual? In what way?"
     "About you. I mean, not about what you're doing, but actually about you: how your health is; are you happy; are you being treated well; are you allowed out; are you enjoying the visit... Well, I thought them odd."
     I scratched at her back.
     "Mikah?"
     "Hmm? Oh. Yeah. Who was asking?"
     "I'm not sure. I enquired after: A noble lady, from an old line of merchants, ships and caravans. Established and respectable. An ex-candidate as a matter of fact. I answered her, as best I was able. She seemed interested, but..."
     "But you thought it odd?"
     "A bit personal, aren't they? But then... there are enough who've been trying to tempt you from Land-of-Water? Fishing for appealing bait perhaps?"
     "A," I agreed. "Not that unusual then."
     "Just odd then," she sighed and bumped her head against my chest. "Odd questions about an odd person. Appropriate, a?"
     "You so funny," I mock-chided the alien lady with her pelt clinging slick-black to alien curves. It was slippery under my fingertips. She, in turn, stroked fingertips down my skin, thinking her own thoughts.
     "Your strange day," she said eventually. "What was it?"
     "Oh. Mediators," I said. "And high-born."
     "Doing what?" She took up a washcloth, lathered it with the sludgey Rris soap.
     "Someone was trying to make a point. Or maybe a warning. I think. But I'm not sure who or what. I think they were trying to show nobles that if they asked the questions they really wanted to ask then the Guild would find out. Or perhaps it was see if I would say things I shouldn't to people I shouldn't."
     "Oh," she said and I could see she didn't really understand. "You didn't annoy the Mediators again?"
     "I don't think so. I think I did what they expected."
     "And annoyed someone else?"
     "Possibly some people who thought the rules didn't apply to them. "
     "That doesn't sound so good. Huh. This hide of your is already resembling a map without your getting more folks angry. These weren't here before we left." She stroked the cloth down my flank, wrung it out. "And there's that cut on your leg."
     I winced. "I don't go out of my way for that, you know."
     "I know," she said. "Just... try not to annoy people."
     "And what if they annoy me?"
     She chittered, flashed ranks of little sharp teeth at me. "Smile and be polite. You do have a reputation to consider."
     I laughed and stroked her cheek, smoothing the slick fur down over the feline bone structure beneath. Light caught her eyes, making them flash. Utterly inhuman. "You think they'll make me look bad in plays?"
     "Could be something to consider. A harmless — if irreverent — oddity is preferable to an angry and dangerous beast."
     I did consider that, while she carefully worked the cloth around the scar ridges on my back. That and popular opinion and propaganda and the way the wind could blow. A comedy? Or a horror? "I think," I eventually said. "I think we really should make an effort to see that play."

Meetings continued the next day, along with the bad weather. Chaeitch, Rraerch, Rohinia and I rode under stone-gray clouds to more places around Red Leaves: the Masons Guild hall, a modern brick factory producing stamped tin pots and pans, a waterside warehouse handling giant bales of hemp, and finally a workshop that was little more than rickety building over a floor of ceramic crucibles filled with colored dyes and whose workers' fur were stained like hippy music-festival t-shirts.
     The issues were the same — how can we do this better, faster, cheaper. And again I saw that their most pressing issues were transport and power. After that came production and material concerns. And jogging along behind those was manpower... Rrispower... whatever.
     That's not to say it wasn't interesting. The warehouses where hemp was stored were big places, packed with bales. I'd never understood how versatile the stuff was. The Rris didn't have fabrics from the cotton plant, but they had woolens and an amazing amount of stuff from hemp, or cannabis. The plant grew fast, easily, and also provided material for linens, ropes, paper, waxes, resins, and oils. The only little problem I had with it was the Rris didn't have any problems with using real cannabis plants. After all, they couldn't get high off it. I didn't know what the THC content of their crops was — they didn't breed for that aspect — but I made a note not to eat any bales or smoke rope.
     We got through that drab day without mishap. Evening turned into another formal dinner at the Palace. Dining with his lordship. And guests.
     Time to wash and dress. Not the monkey-suit at least. Count my blessings.
     And try to remember that Rris evolved from solitary hunters. They don't do group meals as social bonding fun, so there were usually other reasons.
     The formal dining room was a great deal more impressive than the private one we'd met in before. Larger. Much larger: a high ceiling vaulted with arched timbers and walls a long throw from each other. Lighting was dim gas lamps — comfortable for Rris eyes — and the walls were lined with tall and narrow panels of lacquered amber and gold leaf. They all but glowed in the gaslight. Amber smoldered with an interior glow like aged whiskey and worked gilt burning with a glory like distant sunrise. The table was dark wood, the grain so worn and polished that it reflected highlights from the silverware and candles.
     His lordship also glittered. Chita ah Thes'ita was only wearing a pleated white linen kilt and a vest that looked like it was made from lace, but jewelry gleamed in the twilight. Fine bracelets, earrings, twined arm bands, hammered gorget... it all shone with a luster to match the wall panels.
     The guests for that night were an assorted bunch. There were staff from the Land-ofWater embassy: the ambassador — Ah Fefthri — and an associate. Both dressed to the nines. There were also nobles: a Rris lady sitting at ah Thes'ita's side who didn't say much, but watched me like a cat watching an unfamiliar dog; another pair from the Bankers Guild; a trio of lords and a lady in their finery — breeches and vests of fine material and expensive colors and jewelry. Nothing to compete with the Rris king. Which was probably the point.
     Our own party wasn't about to compete either: Rohinia in dark greys that, while clean, was little more than a uniform. Chaeitch and Rraerch were more colorful, with expensive cloth and tooled leather and jewelry. Chihirae — her clothes were elegant beyond a winter teacher's means, but they couldn't compare with their lordship's finery. Makepeace was trying, but she was worse off than Chihirae. She had a fancily embroidered kilt and vest and a few trinkets of jewelry which I think Rraerch and Chaeitch had loaned her so the servants weren't better dressed than she was.
     I'd have to see if I could do something about that.
     And myself? I wasn't trying to compete at all. Pants and tunic and jacket and budding headache.
     "You're seeing problems?" Thes'ita was asking over the entree.
     "Expansion, I think," Chaeitch said, nipping a cube of raw meat from a silver fork and chewing thoughtfully. "You're gutting the old workshops and mills in the city. Refitting them. That's not going to be sufficient. And there isn't room to spread."
     "If you're referring to extra room, that's [straightforward] enough," the king said. "Surrounding properties can be removed to make way."
     I wondered how their property laws worked. I suspected it was good to be the king.
     "I think that won't be the all of it," Chaeitch said. "You will require more and more room for factories and workshops. You will require more materials, more fuel. I'm sure transport through the city isn't smooth at the best of times. If you rely on carts, then the streets will be a swamp of jammed wagons and animal waste. If you use choose to build rail you will have to destroy what's left of your city to accommodate it."
     "Ah Rihey?" his lordship looked at me.
     "He's not wrong," I said and the other guests were still staring at me like a sideshow.
     "Ah," the Rris king tilted the cup-like bowl he was holding, swirling the soup. "You have a solution?"
     "Suggestion," I said. "My people had... similar problems. The factories made money, so they were... ah, deemed important. Everything was pushed aside to make room for them. And then you have to live with everything else the factories bring: the noise, the smells, the poisons in the air and water, the soot and dirt, the crowding. All of that makes people ill. It kills them."
     I looked around at feline faces staring back. There were emotions there, but they weren't expressed in any human form: a twitch of the ears, pupils dilating, muzzle drawing back. Like that inscrutable Asian cliché taken to extremes. And it was still so difficult for me to read them.
     "I know the factories are big and impressive, so it can be easy to forget that what is really important are the people who work in them. Buildings can be built; skilled workers are harder to find. They are your wealth. Without them you just have stone and metal. They are your nation. Without them you are lord of dirt and trees."
     "And without the factories those people become little more than mouths to feed," one of the lords — one of the males — retorted. "The city cannot compete with those that do what's necessary."
     "You don't have to forgo them," I said. "But you should plan them. Think about where you place them with an eye to what will come."
     "And what is that?"
     "They will grow. You could consider them villages, or perhaps small towns in their own rights. Place them on the outskirts. On a canal or rail line would be good. There's room to expand and transport available. Provide good housing for the workers, schools, medical care."
     "That all costs."
     "And it's worth it if you keep your workers happy and healthy. They work better. And better places to live attract better people."
     "A?"
     "I would not live in a place where I was breathing smoke all day and night."
     "Not all bad then?"
     That was intended as an insult I realized as a horrible silence dropped. The Rris noble met my stare with amber-rimmed blackness.
     "That was entirely uncalled for," ah Thes'ista growled. "A guest to my hearth, you insult another. You should..."
     "Hold on," I said. "Please, wait. He has a right to an opinion."
     The Rris king sat motionless, then he slowly turned to the Rris lord. "You have a reason to say this?"
     "A reason?" the other smiled. He was... I wasn't sure how old he was. Middle age, like the king. His clothes were expensive, his fur well groomed, but I could see the faint rough patches that hinted at underlying scars. One of his ears was missing the tip. He toyed with his own glass. "Sir, you know of course that this... this visitor is a trick. You notice it advocates changes that will drive everyone from their work, destroy livelihoods, and ruin people. Then it proceeds to tell us that it wouldn't live in the same city as these devices. By encouraging it I fear you're feeding the forest fire."
     "Sir," the Land-of-Water ambassador gasped to the king. "I must protest!"
     The king dipped his nose, eyes like gun muzzles. "What we're doing," he replied to the upstart lord, "is running with the rest of the hunt. Those that fall behind get the scraps. Now, you may have reservations about what is happening, but that does not excuse such boorish behavior. You have been given the opportunity to ask our... visitor about his ideas, and that's an opportunity I suggest you use constructively, rather than wasting the time on petty insults."
     "Ah," that Rris lord inclined his head. If he'd been a human, I might've seen muscles in his jaws tighten, or eyes narrow, or fists clench. Instead he looked outwardly placid, quite unconcerned.
     "I would consider timely warnings as most constructive," he said and I tensed. I wasn't the only one. And for a second I wondered if dinner was going to devolve into a fight. "It's not Rris. Not a person. A fraud and a [imposter/ charlatan]... a beast! A creature that kills people! You know it's insane! You've heard..."
     "Enough," the king snarled.
     This time the silence was a near-palpable mass dropped over the room. Everything... stopped. The king's features had frozen, his eyes going black. He was going to explode.
     "Mikah," Rraerch ventured out into the silence. "He didn't..."
     "Yes, he did," I said, not taking my eyes off the Rris. "Now, a good response, for a monster, would be to pull your head off, wouldn't it?"
     He stared back. I smiled. He flinched.
     "I don't do that," I said.
     "You have killed..."
     "Yeah, I have." I touched my scarred cheek with my left hand, the truncated finger quite obvious. "And I've got plenty of reminders of what those people were trying to do to me. And friends of mine. I did what I had to do to protect them."
     "Or what you wanted to do!"
     "You know him, do you?" another voice offered from the silence. Chihirae. Ears plastered flat and eyes pure black. Expression of pure outrage. "You know him?!"
     "I have..."
     "You have heard stories! Gossip and hearsay! You haven't known him. You haven't lived with him! You haven't seen him living and laughing and sleeping and mourning. You haven't lain beside him in the night when he has nightmares! You haven't seen him give everything to help those who can't help themselves; seen him fight and bleed to save one person! One insignificant person! You spill lies and slander, and what makes it worse is that I know he won't raise a claw against you!"
     "Ah, but you are [biased], teacher," he said. "I know you are..."
     "I would be very, very careful about what you say to her," I said, fighting to keep my voice very steady. And I meant every unspoken word of that implicit promise. Chaeitch and Rraerch looked alarmed.
     And perhaps he caught some of that because he faltered. "You say you actually care for Rris, but..."
     "Enough that I don't want them starving in slums, or choking in clouds of stinking smoke," I interjected. "Enough that I don't want children pressed in to work for nothing, or for their water to become so dirty it's poison, or your cities to be turned into hellholes that people can't live in and can't afford to leave. All so a few individuals can be rich enough to live away from all that."
     A silence.
     "Then tell me," he growled. "You advocate these monstrosities — how should we utilize them?"
     "Carefully," I snapped back. "I've repeated this often enough — I can tell you about these... monstrosities, but I can't tell you how to use them. I can offer suggestions; I can tell you what they are good at and what they are bad at. I can tell you where we went wrong and what our mistakes were, but the final choice is always yours."
     "Fine words committing to nothing," he said. "You promise, yet can you deliver anything? We only have your word that all of this is true."
     I studied him for a short time. "So I'm a fraud, a? Seems people were quite willing to use new ideas for guns." There was a twitch at mention of that. "And the new engines seem to work very well. As do the new metals and construction techniques. Aesh Smither here seems to find most of my suggestions work, a?"
     "A," Rraerch said. "Most profitably."
     "So you call me a fraud even though I don't think I've ever been unclear about what I am or what I can offer. And you call me a monster for defending others. And you accuse me of destroying livelihoods when I'm doing my best to make sure that it isn't peoples' lives that are destroyed in the name of profits. You say all this and you have never even met me?"
     Now his ears twitched. Annoyed. "Everyone knows what you are."
     "'Everyone'? I don't recall having spoken to 'everyone'," I said. "I would have remembered that. I think what you are saying is that you have a tendency to believe what you're told. And you were told things by people who'd either never met me or didn't like what I was doing for various reasons. Usually monetary."
     A wrinkle flicked up his muzzle. Gone almost immediately. "And you aren't doing this for money? I hear you are wealthy past a small fortune."
     I snorted. "What I really want, money can't buy. I doubt it's something I'll ever see again."
     "Then why do you do this?"
     "Because I can. Perhaps I can improve lives. Maybe save them. And that's something worth doing. At the least I can help you avoid some of the mistakes my kind made, such as putting factories in the middle of your cities."
     "And you think we're foolish enough to make the same mistakes things like you did?"
     "When money is involved they aren't called mistakes — they're called profits. Certain people think that way, and I know you have them just like we did. Other times it seems to be the obvious thing to do. A long time ago my kind developed a poison that killed insects. It was very effective and seemed harmless to people. Lives were saved because it reduced crop loss, spread of disease." I sighed, shrugged. "Seemed harmless. Turned out that decades of use damaged unborn children."
     "And your factories? You say they are poison."
     "Mercury is a poison," I said. "Lead is a poison. Did you know that? And it is such a convenient metal, a? You drink much water from lead pipes or vessels? Paint with lead in it?" He flinched again. "A number of things that are good for machines aren't so good for people. You don't mix them."
     He turned to Chaeitch, Rraerch. "You know about this?"
     "He's told us repeatedly," Chaeitch said, quite unperturbed.
     "A," Rraerch added, the quintessential accountant. "What he advocates is more expensive initially, but makes sense further down the path."
     He looked from them to me, around at the other faces. "And you," he said, "what about you?"
     Makepeace looked startled, and then like she wanted to melt out of sight as eyes turned to her. "Me?" she squeaked, "Sir? What about me?"
     "You've seen it, haven't you. You've seen what it's capable of? You've seen it kill."
     Makepeace looked down at her hands — she was fidgeting, tapping claws together. She took a breath, laid hands on table. "Sir," she said levelly. "I have. I've seen... horrible acts of violence and murder. But not by ah Rihey. They were committed by Rris, against him, or even against other Rris. I have seen him in bad situations several times, sir, but I have never had any reason to fear him."
     Another silence you could cut chunks out of. I swallowed. Hard.
     "I see," the other eventually said. "And the Mediator Guild feels the same way?"
     "Guild business," Rohinia rumbled without batting an eye, "is its own."
     "Of course," the lord said. He looked around again, at the shock on the other lords' faces, the smoldering anger on the king's, the dismay of members of our party. And his muzzle twitched again. "I see. The easy trail is tempting, a? Of course you understand that's where the hunters wait."
     "A threat?" Rraerch bristled.
     "A warning," the other said. "You're being baited. That is obvious. I just hope you see it before you lead too many others the same way. Chita, you have always been more wary of such ploys. Disappointing."
     He stood, sketched a bow to Chita ah Thes'ita, and then stalked off toward the door. I saw the Rris king's fingers flex, claws extruding, but he bit obvious anger back. A distant door closed.
     "What was that?" I asked the awkward silence.
     "A friend," ah Thes'ita growled. "An old friend."
     I was going to add I'm glad he wasn't an enemy, but I caught Rraerch's glare.
     "I must say were we were not expecting a reception like that tonight," she said cautiously.
     Ah Thes'ita gave the others a meaningful glance, as if daring them to do the same before he settled, huffed and smoothed his cheek ruffs. "As I said, he has earned himself some [something] to speak like that. Although this night was breaking point." There was a flash of teeth that was most emphatically not a smile. Other lords and ladies kept still and silent. They weren't making a scene.
     "That was a... popular opinion?" I carefully asked.
     "Not," his lordship immediately responded. "Absolutely not. You seem to be... quite popular."
     "Oh. Just not with him. And he mentioned others..."
     "Mikah," Rraerch said, "There's a reason so many wish to meet with you."
     "Precisely," the king rumbled and gestured at the table, at the other wary faces gathered around. "That is why you are here, after all. Now, there is food that I am certain will be to your liking, and I am quite sure there will be no more unpleasantness, a?"
     There were hurried signs of assent from other lords and ladies.
     I decided it wasn't a great time to ask about that play.

The remainder of the evening went smoothly. The conversation revolved around safe topics. If things started to drift into uncertain territory, the Mediator was there to steer it back on course, but the most part it was questions about what I could offer them and when I'd be visiting their facilities.
     If that irritated any of the other guests, they hid it well. I suspect they were quite aware his lordship's patience was stretched so were on their best behavior.
     The food was good. Ranks of meat dishes roasted and grilled and seared and raw. Vegetables laid out for me. Fruit preserves and cold sorbets. Wines and brandies and ales. There was only one sauce that might have killed me, and Chaeitch pointed it out before I ate the mouthful.
     So, one angry noble, but no fights, gunplay, rooftop chases, or deaths. Overall a successful evening.
     It was late when we returned to our rooms. Chihirae traipsed to hers, yawning hugely; Chaeitch had a distinct wobble in his step. I saw them off and returned to my chambers.
     For an hour or so. Long enough for people to settle.
     The guards in the hall were reluctant when I stepped out again and told them what I wanted. One of them was Blunt, who was understandably wary of more trouble. But I wasn't asking much. It was just down the hall...
     For a while I thought there wouldn't be an answer. Then the latch clicked and the door cracked open an inch. A slice of furry face appeared in the gap and an amber eye peeked out, then the door was hurriedly opened. "Sir?" Makepeace asked, naked and rumpled from bed. "What... why?"
     "Apologies for the intrusion," I said. "I wanted to thank you for this evening. May I come in?"
     Her ears went back. "I... I... A. Yes. Of course, sir."
     I nodded to Blunt, who was looking not a little bit concerned himself. "Can you wait a while? I'll just be a short time. Don't worry. You're not getting into trouble over this."
     "Sir," he said, not sounding or looking convinced. But he stood watch while I entered and closed the door behind me.
     It was dark in there. Little embers glowed before Makepeace coaxed them, lamps popping to life.
     Her quarters weren't as lavish as mine, but for a student they were a damn sight better than sleeping up under the eaves. From the entry foyer there was a short hall. Off that a drawing room and a bedroom. The lamps were fine oil and milky globes. There were bright rugs on polished floors, dried flowers in vases.
     "The rooms are satisfactory?" I asked.
     Makepeace's ears sprang up. "They're huge, sir. And there's a staff — they have food. And there's a groomer. I've never had a groomer."
     "So, that's a yes?"
     "Hai, yes, sir! Most certainly yes. Please... this way."
     I was about to say I would wait for her to put something on, but that was just an old reflex.
     The drawing room was elegant. There was a black iron stove set with white ceramic tiles decorated with green leaf motifs. Walls were white plaster and cushions were cream and tan. Colder than my quarters as well. Comfortable for Rris, but a bit chilly for me. We sat ourselves on opposite sides of a low table of pale wood. One of her hands brushed repeatedly at the tangled fur of her forearm. Her ears flicked back again.
     I began: "Sorry to disturb you at this hour. I wanted to thank you for... earlier," I said. "I don't think anyone was expecting that sort of reception. And I don't think he was expecting that sort of answer. Thank you."
     "You are quite welcome, sir."
     "The frightening creature bit gets tiresome."
     "A, sir." She ducked her head. "I noticed that on the way here. Having a piece of paper saying you're a person... That's..."
     "Yeah, the tricky part is getting them to read it before they try and shoot you," I sighed and shrugged.
     "Sir?" she ventured, stopped brushing at her fur and clasped hands together. "You didn't come here just to ask me about my quarters."
     "Ah, no."
     "Should I be concerned?"
     "Umm... That depends. Do you like plays?"
     "Plays?" the ears changed their tilt. Confusion.
     "A. Plays. Let me explain."
     She listened.
     "Then, you want me to go to this play and then tell you what it's about? A showing that hasn't been altered for you."
     "A. As soon as you can. I know that's difficult. I'll... owe you again, I think."
     "Yes, sir. But... Sir, it sounds like it's about... you know how it sounds. You want me to tell you that?"
     "Not exactly." I reached into a pocket. The little object clicked into place between us on the table.
     Makepeace cocked her head. "What is that?"
     "I'll show you how to use it. It won't take long — they're simple to use so the simple can use them."
     "Sir?"
     "I'm not saying you're..." I stopped myself, shook my head and tried again. "I mean they're made to be easy to use. Children use them."
     "But what is it?"
     "Okay, perhaps we can start with what was called a self-picture."

Gray, monotonous, freezing weather. Fog that felt like pinpricks against any bare skin and overhead a roiling ceiling of clouds the color of the sooty snow that blew in from the factory district.
     That day was occupied with more visits to the industrial parts of town. There were tours of more warehouses and frozen quaysides along a canal. Tubby coasters creaked and groaned in their berths as the wind rocked them. Stevedores with ice-rimed fur trudged to and fro, shifting goods from holds to carts. Guides showed us through courtyards coated in icy slush and bustling with activity and industry and buildings stacked high with cases and bales and crates and barrels and casks and bundles. Then there were more hours in the local guildhall talking with a congregation of concerned pillars of the society desperately concerned about their bottom line. There were plenty of questions about engines and cargo capacities and the storage of perishable goods over long terms. All of them were obviously hoping I'd give something away by accident and trying to be subtle about it.
     The subject of standardization was raised, along with the usual issue, namely — what do we get out of it? So I was able to respond with an anecdote about how using a standardized pallet could reduce the time taken to unload a boxcar of freight from a day to hours. That raised a few ears.
     Then the only challenge was to ensure they didn't go off and try to create their own standards. The problem that would cause would be annoying for everyone. Encouraging them to support Land-of-Water's push for standard measurements would be far more desirable.
     And easier said than done.
     You'd think people would welcome an opportunity to do something that would not only make their lives easier, but would make them wealthier. Well, those merchants would not only look a gift horse in the mouth, they'd ask for a full genealogy and genome analysis. Their default mindset seemed to be that if they were being given something that would benefit, there must be something wrong with it.
     So they were a hard sell and refused to commit to anything without seeing hard evidence of a benefit for them.
     Something I was starting to understand, which was becoming clearer through talks with Rraerch, was that Rris economics was — as with so many other things — different. I was getting the impression that the concept of growing an industry or business wasn't entirely what they were thinking. Instead of doing something that would increase the amount of business available, they seemed to think there was a set amount in the world and in order for them to have more they would have to take it from someone else. Undertakings that might expand their client base were an alien concept.
     Which would help explain why they were so suspicious of projects that might offer long-term gain for everyone — they thought that someone was going to lose out, and that it might be them. It didn't make the dealing any easier.
     Neither did the Mediators' insistence on vetting and approving everything. I'd known it would cause problems, but it was becoming apparent that the further things progressed the more of a morass the bureaucracy would become. The communication speed, or lack of, only exacerbated the issue.
     We got back late. The moon was lost somewhere behind strata of clouds and swirling ice. Lights around the palace grounds and in the windows were orange glows in the fog. Driving snow flicked through the pools in flurries of silent static. Rris were shadows against those glows as we hustled up the steps and out of the wind.
     Inside was almost as cold. Chandeliers and lamps were alight, bringing a living luster to gold trim. It had a warm feel, but it really just let you see your breath. What would it take to heat a place like the palace, with literally kilometers of halls and rooms? Something like a jet turbine would be my guess. So the warmth of my own quarters was welcome.
     There were no late-night meetings or other engagements scheduled and at the end of a long day of being stared at, that was incredibly welcome. There was time for a shower, as hot as I could handle. I leaned against the wall and let steaming water hammer the back of my neck and the knotted ache through my shoulder.
     I think it was only a minute, but when I turned my head there was a figure standing outside the shower. "You look tired," Chihirae said. "And wet. Mostly wet."
     A play on words in her tongue. I smiled. "You want to join me?"
     She ruffled the puffed-out fur on her breast and gestured a polite negative with the other hand. "I'll have to decline. I've just been dried and groomed."
     "Hard day?" I smiled as water streamed down my face.
     "Exhausting." She pursed her features in a Rris smile. "Almost like hard work."
     "Don't overdo it."
     "I will... consider that advice," she said. "And the cook was enquiring as to whether you want food tonight. I thought they might have neglected to feed you so I told him yes."
     "You'd be right," I wiped water from my eyes. "I am quite hungry."
     "Huhn. These highborn seem more interested in squeezing information out of you than in putting anything back in."
     A few minutes more before I shut the water off. I stepped out, reaching for a towel, to find Chihirae was already holding it. She flicked her ears and didn't say anything as she stepped in closer and I didn't protest too much as she helped dry me. At least I think that's what she was trying to do. And laughing. As was I. As we tug-of-warred our way into the private lounge. Where Makepeace was standing waiting for us.
     I guess the expression on her face would've been pretty comical. She stared, at me, at Chihirae, at me again and there was pure confusion and concern there. "Sir? Ma'am?"
     "Oh, uh, hi," I said as my brain tried to change gear and Chihirae chittered again as I grabbed quickly at the towel. She held onto it a bit longer than necessary before she surrendered it. I threw it around my waist while prickles of heat crawled up the back of my neck.
     "I didn't mean to intrude at an inopportune moment," Makepeace was saying. "I said it was important and your guards let me in."
     As I'd told them to. And my nakedness in front of her was an embarrassment to me, but for her it was the situation. Or perhaps that expression was due to the little meat pastry missing from the neat arrangement on a platter on the table amongst the rest of the food. I cinched the towel and my dignity.
     "It's all right," I told her. "It's fine. Please, sit."
     She clamped her mouth shut and sat with us. I grabbed a turkey sandwich and gestured to the spread. "Help yourself."
     Makepeace hesitated, then made another meat pastry vanish.
     "You said important," Chihirae gently prodded.
     "Hmmm," the younger Rris swallowed her mouthful. "A. Sir, that thing you asked me?"
     She was glancing at Chihirae. "It's all right," I said.
     "A." She fumbled in a belt pouch and handed it over. I took the phone. Chihirae looked more than a little curious.
     "Sir," Makepeace said. "That... if the musicians' guilds and the playwrights' guilds learned one person could take a performance to show others..."
     "A. That's something I'm quite aware of," I said. "I don't think they need to know that yet, do they?"
     "No, sir," she said. "But some of the possibilities..."
     "A," I said. "I know of them. And I think that the Mediators might not appreciate them being spread, if you know what I mean."
     "Oh." She considered. "A. That is understandable."
     I suppose there were a few ways that could be construed, but she seemed to have done as I'd asked. "You didn't have any trouble?"
     "I think I got some strange looks," she said. "And I thought it was upside down. We had a good seat though, so there was a clear view."
     "A," I flicked through the phone's latest recordings. "That... looks good. Thank you."
     She hesitated, looking uncomfortable. "You are going to view it?"
     "I'd like to."
     She waved acceptance.
     "You don't think I should?"
     "I think... I think you are going to have to look at undercurrents," she said and twitched ears back. "It's complicated, I think."
     "You think?"
     "A" Makepeace looked uncomfortable, at me and Chihirae. "Sir, I think I should go now. If I stay too long there might be questions."
     I nodded. "Thank you again. Oh, and help yourself," I said, gesturing at the table.
     She only hesitated a split-second. When she hastened out it was with a skittering of claws on tiles and a bowl filled with sandwiches and bite-foods.
     "You think they're feeding her?" I mused aloud when she'd gone.
     Chihirae was looking more than a little curious. "Mikah, what have you done?"
     "Scratched an itch," I told her as I tapped the phone against the laptop, transferring files. "Now, shall we have some entertainment with dinner?"
     Chihirae watched the screen. "Mikah, that's a playhouse. That's... I didn't know you could do that."
     "You want to watch?"
     Curiosity. Cats. All that. "A," she said.

So. What can I say about the show?
     The cinematography left a bit to be desired. And the sound was tinny. The view wobbled despite stabilization. There was a distorted close up of Makepeace's face, another Rris as the view panned around, then the perspective was from a balcony looking out across furry heads and tufted ears facing towards a stage. There was a proscenium of boards worn smooth, a section jutting out into the audience. Dark, and bad lighting despite the nighttime camera mode. Candles floated in troughs of water at the foot of the stage. White paper screens printed in stylized bare branch patterns hid the wings. The view wobbled a few times and then settled. Propped on something.
     There were noises of an alien crowd — hissing conversation, chittering laughter, shouted yowls and howls. No dimming of the lights, but nevertheless the crowd simmered down as the play started.
     How should I have taken it?
     The set looked... cheap. A rickety-looking scaffold with doors that broke the stage up into rooms beneath a broad black sweep of a stylized roof like the wings like of a raven on snow. The backdrop was a frame of backlit paper screens. A narrator stalked the stage, melodramatically setting the scene — a remote inn settling down for a winter evening. Occupants going about their business. There were arrivals for the night: a trio of merchants, a physician, a minstrel, a mason, a scholar. The narrator gave just enough information to introduce them. Chihirae chittered several times — apparently it was witty.
     A late arrival. A distinguished lord and his entourage: a pair of guards, a serving girl, his steward. And their wild specimen on its leash.
     "Seriously?" I croaked.
     Chihirae made a muffled noise.
     Yeah, it was obviously a Rris on stilts, in a mask and costume. It was beastly. It was grotesque. It was detailed. It was embarrassing in its details. It was also pretty obvious what that specimen was supposed to be. It was fed by the serving girl and caged 'outside', a shadow against the backdrop as life went on in the inn.
     I could feel Chihirae's concern.
     Evening meal. Shorts lines from characters. Then night. The cast retired.
     The storm blew in. The lights were low.
     Then screams. Murder in the night. The cast assembled to find a guard and one of the inn stablehands dead. And the cage was open and the beast was gone.
     A murder-mystery? A whodunit? A whatdunnit? But there was the shadowy monstrosity behind the scenes. A horror? Was this their version of The Thing? I didn't really know what I was watching.
     The plot continued in that vein. Doors would open and rooms would light for an act. Actors would speak their pieces. And they proved to be a devious and self-involved bunch. There was back-biting, back-stabbing, gossip and plotting.
     And then, inevitably, there was bloody murder. And the jittery shadow of that beast rampaging across the paper backdrop, gone before the dwindling cast could assemble. Melodramatic accusations. Demands that the lord protect them. And his authority diminishing as he was powerless to do so.
     It was obviously a costumed Rris on stilts, but the form and the mask was also horribly familiar. There were details. Embarrassing details.
     "You're shivering," Chihirae murmured. "You're cold?"
     "A," I said. "Cold."
     She chittered and leaned in closer. Warm solidity.
     As the night went on and the storm howled, characters were dying off. The merchants were gone. As were cooks, the scholar and physician, servants, picked off one by one.
     The remaining were grouped together in the hall: stranded travelers and staff alike. If they stayed together, they would be safe, so the lord proclaimed. A meal had been prepared by the innkeepers. They ate.
     What was that thing? Where had it come from? A beast from the highlands, the lord explained. It was to be taken to the capital for exhibition.
     Then the poison in the stew kicked in.
     The only traveler left standing was the lord's serving girl. She stood alone among the bodies as the innsfolk gathered around with their knives. A gloating speech from the innkeeper about how their mission of assassination was done; how they'd killed the staff and replaced them; about how the beast had not only done their job for them but provided a scapegoat; about how there would be no witnesses and they could collect their pay.
     And the beast rose from the darkness.
     Lots of screaming and slashing of claws and waving of blades, sparks and flashes of guns in the smoke. Finally the chaos died down; the smoke cleared. The serving girl was left facing the creature among the bodies.
     It was difficult to hear what was said then — it was being recorded with a phone from a distance after all — but she was asking questions, more of them with increasing urgency as the creature just stared at her.
     Then stepped forward and bowed.
     "You were kind to me," was what I think it said.
     "What are you?" she said.
     It replied. Then gave her something. Then was gone. Leaving her standing amidst bloody carnage. Chihirae gave me a puzzled glance and made an enquiring noise. I wasn't aware that my own reaction had been visible.
     On the stage the narrator returned to remind the audience that this had probably really happened somewhere in the untamed high lands and thanking them for their patronage.
     And the laughter of the audience. Sounds of Rris cheering and music. The camera tilted crazily as someone fumbled with it. A flash of Makepeace's hairy features.
     And Chihirae was watching me. She looked worried. "That was..." she trailed off. Made a small, helpless gesture.
     "I noticed," I sighed.
     A pause. "It could have been worse."
     "What was that supposed to be?" I asked. "I mean: what kind of play was that supposed to be? How do you perceive it?"
     Chihirae was thoughtful. "A blood comedy on the surface. But..."
     "A comedy?" I was surprised.
     "A... of sorts, yes. It was actually well-written. Witty. Funny. But there were deeper currents."
     "Bad?"
     "No. No, not really. I don't think yo... that creature was portrayed as the culprit. There was certainly a beast in the story. Beasts. But it wasn't him."
     "Will people see that?"
     "Mikah, it wasn't exactly subtle."
     I considered that.
     "And speaking of him," she said and now her expression was a smirk. "Most certainly a him, a? They weren't that far off the mark, a? "
     "What? I'm not... Rot it, I'm not erect all the time!"
     "Oh? Sometimes it seems like it," she chittered.
     "That wasn't..." I started, exasperated. She was teasing me. "And how did they know about... about that anyway? Have you been telling stories again?"
     "Not I," she said. "There've been enough doctors, a? I imagine there are textbooks now."
     "Seriously?"
     "You'd know better than I. They might've just asked around."
     I shook my head. "Back there at the inn, I should've shot him."
     She chittered, laid back. "I think that might possibly have caused you more troubles. Almost as many as you'll have if the playwrights guild learns about that box of yours. Packaging a play to view again and again... that would get their attention."
     "You knew it could do that. You've watched..."
     She waved a complicated little gesture. "Your plays aren't the same thing. I didn't think you could just... hold a play with it like that. I think the playwrights, actors, play houses... they would all start to make noise about it."
     "A," I said. "I know. When they learn how they can store their plays on... moving books, and then sell those books they will be quite in favor of it. But, that won't be for some time. For now I'd rather they didn't know."
     "Makepeace might talk."
     "Do you think that's likely?"
     "I think... I think if someone asked her the right way she might get enthusiastic in her response. She's young: restraint is still an uncommon concept."
     I smiled. "I suppose so. But she's also one of the few people around I'm pretty sure don't have other plans."
     "You trust her?"
     "I think I do. More than some. And she's intelligent."
     "Enough to realize that this might be something she can hold over you."
     "I don't think she's that kind of person," I said carefully.
     "Yet. Sah! I know: that sounds terrible. But she's dabbling in University politics, and you can't swim in that and not be changed. Look at you — you've certainly changed. What do you think you'll do about that play?"
     "Do?" I blinked. "I... don't think I'll do anything. People have a right to say what they want. And... it could have been worse, a?"
     "A."
     "So, it might be better to keep this to myself, a? Keep this... memory of the play quiet. Not make waves."
     A snort. "You see? You have changed."
     I shrugged, human-fashion. "It might be interesting if they do take me to an official showing. To see if it's been changed."
     "You think they'd do that?"
     "If they think there's something there that might offend me, then probably. I'm just not sure they know what that would be."
     "A naked and erect ape might do it," she chittered, stroking my arm.
     "If you didn't know me, would you think so?"
     "No..." she conceded.
     "I would like to find out how someone knew... those details," I said. That and some other aspects that... that one person I knew of knew.
     "Hai," she laughed again, "perhaps they'd let you talk to the playwright, a?"
     Hmmm. Not such a bad idea.

Red Leaves' masters had their own day for queries and questions. The initial meetings were in another wing of the palace, in a room surrounded by walls and ceilings covered in carved panels depicting city and urban scenes. Windows overlooked white palace grounds, glaring bright beneath crisp blue skies. The officials there had general questions pertaining to the logistics of running a city: questions about construction and layouts and services and providing for emergencies such as fire or famine.
     I answered what I could. There were questions regarding taxation and tithes and other sorts of property and ownership schemes. To say it was labyrinthine was an understatement. There were agreements and deals and understandings going back centuries and for me to step in and try to unravel some arrangement made a hundred years ago wherein a cattle herder has grazing rights in what is now a city square... that wasn't about to happen. I wasn't wired and simply didn't have the history to understand those problems and solutions.
     Meetings with the higher officials concluded, the job was handed off to their subordinates. Their offices weren't as handy: they were in the city center, an hours ride away. And they weren't as fancy: they were an ornate stone façade fronting a conglomeration of expensive architecture and cheaper brick, and room after room of shelves of dusty ledgers and files and tomes and dead flies and windows with views of back alleys and frozen downpipes. We met with clerks in time-and-use-worn rooms where actual work was done.
     None of those functionaries was as well attired as their bosses, but they had more information. They knew what they needed, they knew the right questions. Urban issues, planning and construction. How to bring water in, how to move waste away. How to store provisions. Grain silos? Rris use grain in a variety of products, but again — they're predominantly carnivores. For Rris cattle are a higher priority, and storing meat... you can either keep them alive, or you need icehouses. They'd heard mention of my mention of being able to store perishable goods for transport. Could that be done for warehouses? How much would it cost?
     We ended up with tentative requests for evaluative refrigeration engines, whenever they became available. Rraerch and Chaeitch had another chance to push their standardization initiative with people who seemed to see the benefits in it. Perhaps they'd be able to help sway their superiors' opinions.
     We departed in late afternoon. The carriages clattered out into streets where soldiers cleared the way. Through the slats over the windows I could see buildings passing by, side streets and alleyways where interested locals watched the procession rumble past. Other traffic was stopped, the wagons and carts laden with wood and coal and sand and stone and other essentials of the city sitting waiting with annoyed-looking drivers on the benches.
     Not a great deal different from Shattered Water, right down to the crazed pattern of streets radiating from plazas. There were shops, people going about their business, the noise of animals and traffic, the smells of a busy market.
     "Hold up," I said. "Can we stop?"
     "What?" Chaeitch said and Jenes'ahn looked alarmed.
     "Stop!" I yelled and banged on the roof. The carriage jerked to a halt. Commotion outside.
     "What is it?" Jenes'ahn said and when I reached for the door latch a hand with claws extruded pounced on mine. "What is it?" she hissed.
     "You hungry?" I asked.
     "What?"
     "Are you hungry? There's a stall there selling tail roast. Been a while since I had that."
     "I could eat," Chaeitch volunteered.
     "Food?" Jenes'ahn blinked. "You stopped us for that?"
     "You don't eat?" I asked her. "We haven't had anything since breakfast and I don't know about you, but I am hungry."
     Those amber eyes didn't blink and the hand didn't move.
     "I'll pay," I offered.
     "Constable," Rraerch spoke up. "Is it really such an asking? How do you balance the risk?"
     I saw Jenes'ahn's pupils flex and then she slowly withdrew her hand. "Very well. Mikah, you have good eyes — use them. At the first sign of trouble we are leaving. There are plenty who might consider something like this as an opportunity."
     "You think someone would be expecting this?" I said as I pushed the door open.
     "I would," she said.
     "Yeah, but you're weird," I muttered as the crowd in the market started to notice the new performance.
     We were like a precipitate in a chemistry experiment — a crowd solidifying from the flow of street traffic. Guards formed a perimeter beyond which curious faces watched and ears twitched and gossip spread as we approached the stall. Which was a charcoal grill and a cart displaying cuts of meat and a stupefied cook with a very young cub hiding behind her leg.
     Negotiations were the usual affair. When I asked about her wares she just stared at me, then at the Rris behind me as if one of them was a ventriloquist. It was only when I threatened her with money that she focused, licked her chops, and dealt with me. It was a fair bit of money, but it was for her entire stock. I paid for sticks of tail roast for us, our guards, drivers... it wasn't entirely altruistic: the time it took to cook them was time for me to stroll around the market while I munched my own overcooked kebab.
     That was always a change from the rarified heights of the upper classes. Whereas actual shops were occupied by more affluent merchants, the markets were the province of the poorer inhabitants. Places of everyday life. The stalls and stands were basic things of cheap wood hidden under colorful bunting or paint. Underfoot was a sludge of trampled dirty snow and ice mixed with trash and animal waste. The wind was knife-cold, every gust bringing new scents and smells of cooking or animals or leather or other less-definable things.
     I used those few minutes to poke around the stalls. The wares were pretty sparse and crude. Home shopping network cheap. There were implements for the home: tin pots and pans, knives and needles. Tinker stuff. Tools of all descriptions: crude, but solid. Trinkets, small toys, gewgaws, ornaments and jewelry. Cheap clothes and rugs. Small books. Things that people without much money might be able to afford. There was a lot of food though: basic daily fare, meats and breads and root vegetables and pies and wraps and wines. I considered that as I browsed, finished my own meal, and tried to ignore the stares.
     "That was satisfactory?" Jenes'ahn asked as we set off again. Her tone was civil enough, but there was ice under there.
     "Very pleasant, thank you," I smiled innocently. "No riots, I noticed."
     "That crowd was growing quickly," she said.
     "Good for business."
     Jenes'ahn rumpled her muzzle. "And good for anyone else who wants to get close. You say I'm getting my hackles up, but they've tried before. Haven't they? They'll try again."
     Of course she was right. Of course they would. I shrugged. "A. They will. And I'm supposed to hide from them?"
     "It would make my job easier," she rumbled, subsiding into her seat. "What were you doing there anyway?"
     "Looking," I said. "Does everyone in town come to market for their meals?"
     The conversation's change of direction actually seemed to surprise her. "Most do. How else would they prepare them?"
     "They..." I began, then looked at the window again, at the busy scenes outside.
     How would they... Damn. Most of those houses would be like Chihirae's winter cottage, or that little townhouse I'd seen that night in Shattered Water: there'd been a little stove, but there hadn't been a dedicated kitchen. What would be the point? It'd be an expensive extra room. The stove worked for stews, soups, things that would keep and reheat, and — except for during the coldest part of winter — there was no way to store perishable foodstuffs.
     So, you pick up something at the market. Or the inn, or local butchers or bakers. Cheap and filling food. Heavy meals that kept you going. Various types of breads and meats, pies and rolls and wraps like those kebabs. All supplied by those shouting vendors out there in the square.
     "How do they store their perishable goods in summer?"
     "There are ice houses. You use suppliers for your own ice cellar in..." she stopped. "The meeting this morning. They were asking about ways to store foodstuff in warehouses. Machines to do that would not please the ice merchants."
     I almost laughed. "Constable, my people have machines like that in every house; in inns and stores. They are small and cheap. They are everywhere. They changed a lot. The ice merchants only a small part of it."
     "And how did your merchants deal with that?"
     "They adapted. Yes, the ice merchants fought, initially. They claimed their frozen pond water ice was better than machine-made ice."
     "Was it?"
     I rolled my eyes. "It was frozen pond water, along with everything that lived in those ponds: all sorts of interesting muck and bugs and diseases. So, no. But the point is, those merchants fought back. They lost. They adapted. They started making and selling the machines to their existing clients, which they had a lot of. They discovered new applications — you could ship perishable goods across the country; around the world. They could be stored in warehouses. Shops. Homes."
     I saw her ear twitch. "So those vendors back there become [something]. Perhaps your machines are cheap and small, but what could we manufacture? Would they be affordable? Or would they be monstrous things in buildings?"
     Chaeitch raised a pointed finger. "Hai, that is valid. You know we couldn't produce anything as polished as the devices you're familiar with in large numbers and make them affordable to all."
     "A," I agreed.
     "And that is good for whom?" Jenes'ahn said. "Probably not those sellers in the marketplace."
     "But it might be. A local warehouse with frozen goods available, or even renting space to store goods. More stock, fresher, cheaper, a greater variety. And of course the whole process takes time. So, they have time to react and change. Don't tell me that's unheard of: this entire country changed from independent and squabbling groups of self-employed taxfarmers along the trade lines to what it is today."
     The mediator snorted, a cough of breath condensing in the chill. "That was a long time ago. Not entirely the same."
     "The Guild was involved there as well, a?" I said. "Then you have some idea of how to manipulate the growth of a country."
     There was the momentary flicker of a glance at Rraerch before Jenes'ahn lowered her muzzle. "Not the same," she said emphatically. "That was normal. It took centuries. And there was no outside meddling."
     Meddling. Implying that was what I was doing when all I was doing was as they asked. "No, all the meddling was internal, wasn't it. I think it was the same. Things changed. I have no doubts there were people who didn't like it, but it happened. Would you say things now are better? or worse?"
     She chewed that over, slouched down in her seat with ears flicking back. "That would depend upon who you ask."
     "A," I said. "See? It always depends."
     "And what if you asked someone like that lady back there. Someone whose life is directly affected?"
     "And what if they could make her life easier and more prosperous?"
     "You can guarantee that would happen?"
     I sighed in frustration and looked to Rraerch, who been witnessing the whole thing. She looked... impassive. "Your thoughts?" I asked.
     "I think," she said slowly. "I think those are questions I'd expect drunken first-year students at the university would amuse themselves with."
     I think that even surprised Jenes'ahn.
     "Huhn," Rraerch snorted and scratched one of her cheek tufts with an extended claw. "Shallow philosophy sounding profound. Mikah, those are peoples' lives you are dealing with and what you do will, eventually, wet their ankles. But no matter what you do, that's going to happen. And constable, with respect, those people are — I think — more robust and adaptable than you give them credit for.
     "Change happens. People deal with it. Life goes on. How we deal with it and how we help others deal with says more about us than any little debate could."

Staff were waiting to take my ice encrusted coat and moccasins and mop up the puddles I trailed into the entry hall. After a day of chilly buildings and drafty carriages the warmth wrapped me like a cloak, tingling against bare skin. Her ladyship was waiting in the study I was told. I thanked them and the Rris servants discreetly melted away.
     Away down the hall a light spilled from the drawing room, along with the strains of a waltz.
     A fire was crackling in the stove. Lamps flickered. As did the visualizer running on the laptop screen. Chihirae was laid back on a cushion, listening, eyes closed, as Strauss' the Voices of Spring filled the room. I stood and watched. It was oddly fitting in that environment.
     After a short time Chihirae said, "you smell cold." Then she opened her eyes and smiled. "You look cold."
     I brushed melting ice from my beard. "You know it's winter out there. That music is about spring."
     "A? It's different from most of the other noise." She scratched her ear. "I almost recognize the instruments."
     "It was written a long time ago. Performed more recently."
     "Why? Art?"
     "Of a kind."
     "Not entirely? Then it has a purpose?"
     I considered. And that line of thought was...
     "What?" she asked. "It's amusing?"
     "It's..." I tried to think how to explain it, then offered her my hand. "Here. Easier to show you."
     Her expression was suspicious, but she took my hand and I helped her up. Wearing fur and that wary expression as I stepped close. "Now, you put your hand here. Like that. Now we step, in time with the music. One two three one two..."
     And I stepped and she resisted, then moved a bit late and trod on my foot and we just about went over. I caught her, hand behind the small of her back. "Relax," I suggested. "You move with your heartbeat..."
     Which, of course, wasn't human. I could feel it under her ribs, driving out of synch with my own.
     I sighed, shook my head and looked down at her face. "Or, just follow the music, a?"
     An ear flicked and she chittered. "A."
     After a while she got it. She was agile, swifter and lighter on her feet than any human. If dancing could mean anything to them then Rris would be formidable on the dance floor. But of course...
     The muscles under my hand weren't like those I'd had dance lessons with so long ago. There was the inhuman body heat, the fur, the way the skin under that moved as she moved with the music. Chitttered up at me. "This is odd."
     "You think so?"
     "And this is the purpose of that music?"
     "One for the other, I think," I said. "Status. Entertainment. A social thing."
     She considered that for a few steps. And then she started shaking against me. Laughing. So hard she had to stop.
     "What?" I looked down at her.
     "This..." she chittered again. "This... Mikah. This is about sex, isn't it. Don't deny it. Rot, everything your kind does seems to involve it somewhere. And this... this is more blatant than most, a?"
     "Like I said, a social thing, a?"
     "You always have to hide it behind metaphors like this? Leaves and shadows."
     "So this might be a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire?"
     She swiped at my cheek, claws barely expressed before her fingers fussed with my beard. "You know what?" she murmured.
     "What?"
     "You stink!" she snorted and batted my nose. "Ape and smoke and animals and angry people."
     "Hey!" I protested. "Some of us have to work, you know. You weren't too overworked with decadent luxury, I hope?"
     She laughed again. "I found enough to keep me occupied. Really, with boxes filled with plays and music and stories and stranger things, I can't see how your kind can ever get bored."
     "Oh, we find ways."
     "With all the stories of the world?"
     "Difficult to compete with reality superhero cooking shows," I said.
     "And what does that mean?"
     "I suppose everything isn't enough. People always want more."
     "I've heard that before."
     "A. People are people."
     She lowered her head, butted gently against my chest. "Even if they are furless beasts, a?"
     "You're so cruel to me, your ladyship."
     "I tell you something: you go and clean and then perhaps we can look at your 'horizontal desires', a?"
     "Is that all you ever think about?"
     This time her swipe didn't quite have her claws pulled.

Laying on my back on cool sheets. There was a warm weight on my right arm which was more asleep than I was. Cobwebs of dreams broke and scattered. There were voices. Light. I groaned and flopped an arm over my eyes.
     "Morning and waking, sir," Yeircaez was standing primly at the foot of the bed as servants bustled silently in the background. "His lordship has requested the pleasure of your company for morning meal."
     "Breakfast?" I mumbled stupidly.
     "Yes, sir."
     "Oh. Does her ladyship know?"
     A muffled grunt came from the lump under the sheets beside me.
     "I believe so, sir."
     So, a half-hour later I was yawning my way into the chill pale marble of the Rris King's chambers. Still dark outside the high windows of his dining room, the barest hint of dawn bothering the horizon. On a glaring purple and gold rug his lordship was seated at a low table. There were plates before him and a pile of paperwork alongside. I was coming to think that the kingship business was more work than play.
     No Mediators though. That was noteworthy.
     The steward directed me to a set place, across from his lordship. Who was engrossed in a document covered with a dense matrix of Rris writing. Convoy of staff ghosted by and a meal of meat pies, nuts and berries, diced fruit, and breads were laid out. When they were done his lordship laid the paper aside, brushed at his grey cheek tufts. "Good morning, ah Rihey. You are rested?"
     "Yes, sir," I said. Truth be told, we'd gone to sleep later than we should have, pending... activities. "Quite rested."
     "Excellent. I do understand that your schedule has been exceedingly busy. It is actually becoming quite difficult to accommodate the requests for your time." He looked down at the pile of papers and used a clawtip to slide a single sheet out. "It seems every minor noble or merchant out there is petitioning the palace requesting a meeting with you."
     I nibbled on blueberries. "More?"
     "A." He tapped the stack, looking supremely unimpressed. "Since yesterday. And on top of this I hear another request."
     "Hmmm?" I had a mouthful and a sudden bad feeling.
     "That you would like to attend a play."
     I swallowed. "Oh."
     "Hmmm," the Rris king rumbled. "A play that isn't highly regarded. It is most certainly not considered a masterwork. I would venture to say that it's not considered at all."
     "Really? I heard that it was quite popular."
     "In certain circles, perhaps."
     "That might be why I was interested in it. I've seen a few of the more... highlyregarded plays. I'd like to see one of these less regarded ones. A contrast, if you will."
     He picked up a strip of meat with a finger fork. Munched thoughtfully. "You are only here for a limited time. That time is becoming more valuable. Those people who want to use that time might not be overly pleased to see you using it for things they consider frivolous. That makes more problems for me."
     "I don't consider learning more about you frivolous," I said calmly. "I think it's quite important. It can prevent misunderstandings."
     His pupils flickered, black and back. "Huhn, is it helping?"
     I shrugged. "It seems to be. The spreading of rumors doesn't help. Have people been telling stories about me?"
     "Mine? I doubt it. They understand discretion."
     I waved a noncommittal agreement. "Hmm, perhaps another reason to have an interest in this play."
     He huffed, glowering and settling down. "There might be a simple way about this."
     "A?"
     "I'm sure that if word were to get around that you had an interest in seeing this production, then someone would leap up eager to sponsor a showing for you. That could be to everyone's advantage."
     "Oh. Would that work?"
     "I believe so. I will see what can be arranged. You can wait a day or so?"
     Which was about what I'd been expecting. "I don't have any other plans."

Now, the day spent with the Clockworkers Guild was an interesting one.
     That Guild was a fairly recent addition — one of the upstarts of the modern times. Not influential or overly wealthy, but no paupers either. Their hall was in a block that'd seen better days. The buildings were old — a hodge-podge of wooden clapboard and whitewashed plaster and stonemasonry exteriors with knocked-through interiors. Some of the rooms were in three buildings at the same time. Everything in there was old — not the 'old money' feel that infused some of the other Guilds I'd visited, but just well-used and time-worn.
     Other buildings in the block were workshops. And homes; housing for the craftsmen with apprentices up in the rafters. All very insular and self-contained.
     "There were troubles with our recognition," the hall master told me as our retinue was led through show rooms filled with devices of gleaming brass and copper. Things like abacuses with gears; cylindrical stacks of gears; plates with ornate little dials on them.
     "What does that mean?" I asked.
     "Huhn?" he cocked his head. He was older, with particularly shaggy cheek tufts. Name of Ghereth. "Huhn, you don't know? Well, initially the Guild was amalgamated with the Metalworkers Guild. We applied for independent recognition. Neither the Metalworkers nor the governments were too pleased, for various reasons. They refused, despite appeals."
     He sighed, as though it was a tiresome subject. "The masters in Mi'itchi's Trail decided to withhold services. So, no clocks or [sextants] or calculation machines or clockwork for weapons. There were disturbances. Persuasions of various sorts, on all sides. Eventually..." he gestured, a sweep of a finger indicating the hall.
     "An improvement, I'm sure," he said. "For the Guild it meant that our work was our own. That was important."
     And cut out a few middlemen. And then the captains of that particular industry steered their ship due profit. They were already trying to catch up with their contemporaries. Or was that just the cynicism speaking.
     Which Ghereth was doing as he pointed out an adding machine like a miniature brass slot machine, complete with lever and spinning wheels. That reminded me of something.
     "You know the Lakehouse Collection?" I asked.
     "I... Uh..." he spun his own gears for a second before collecting himself. "A. Oh, yes. Of course. You have seen it."
     "Do you do a lot of work like that?"
     "Huhn. I would like to say yes, but those works are exemplary. Masterpieces. Work like that is done, but not for such... frivolous reasons."
     "Quite beautiful frivolity."
     "A," he agreed, then ruined it by looking around at the others, at Rohinia and Jenes'ahn. His tail lashed. They were impassive.
     There was a story there that I hadn't been told. I think there was also embarrassment.
     "That was why they were gifted to the Palace?"
     "A. yes. Quite," he said with what I read as relief. "There are works like that here. Just as fine, although not as elaborate."
     There were. In another chamber he showed off shelves of jeweled flowers and crystals and little precious-metal animals that moved or piped or scratched lines on paper. They were remarkable, but not quite the exquisite works of art I'd seen at the Lakehouse.
     The hall master was watching me as I peered at the delicate mechanicals. "You have a considerable interest in these," he eventually noted.
     "Oh. Ah, yes. It's that noticeable?"
     "All these are mostly [journeyman] projects, made by apprentices and juniors for practice; understanding gears and cams and spring tensions. All that sort of thing. The exemplary works are usually owned by sponsors."
     "They are still impressive."
     He looked over the sparkling displays again. "We have timepieces you can carry in your pocket, calculating devices that can multiply tens of six digit numbers, machines to follow the phases of the planets. You don't find those impressive?"
     Which my phone could do in the background while rendering a collapsing brick building realtime. But, you don't insult your hosts. Besides, those things truly were works of art.
     "I do. But, I was an artist. Of sorts. Not an engineer. These I can understand. And, I would hazard these are also works that push what can be done with the tools and techniques?"
     "Many of them, a."
     "Then it could be good to see these and then see how those techniques have been applied elsewhere, a?"
     He slowly gestured consent, but looked dubious.
     The more practical mechanisms he'd referred to were still intricate things. The most basic among them were wood and cast iron frameworks filled with gears and shafts and cogs and cams. A majority of those were variations on abaci or adding machines. No two seemed to be the same, and some of the purposes were awfully specific — a mechanism for working out the tally of tariffs on a particular river crossing, or a counter for adding up the number of logs cut by a mill, or an ornate calendar for tracking the seasonal changes of a single river. All single-function. If you wanted to add and subtract you'd need one for each, and in relative terms they cost more than a high-end car.
     Or you could opt for one of the more up-market models. I was shown calculating engines that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. One at a time, not all together. Those were all shapes and sizes, plain and baroque, polished and rough. There were a dozen different varieties, all using different techniques to perform their calculations. Most were using Rris base ten. A good number were in base eight. A few used binary notation. And there was one that used an entirely made-up notation system for display.
     Then there was something that looked like high-speed accident between industrial machinery and a grandfather clock. "It's part of a lathe," Ghereth explained. "It was based on the idea of Johis-mechanism looms. The path of the cutting heads are learned on these spindles. When they are wound back, the mechanism recites what it learned. As many times as required. And the spindles can be copied and moved to another machine."
     A primitive form of CNC router? "Ah," I said.
     "You understand that?"
     "A. My kind have made similar devices."
     "I was informed you are familiar with Johis gear devices."
     "I have heard the term, but I'm afraid I really know very little about them."
     "Huhn," he rubbed his jaw and glanced at my escort. "I had heard that you owned a very sophisticated type of such device."
     "Perhaps someone has been spreading stories again," I sighed. "I've heard some of my possessions compared with Johis gear, but I have never actually seen one of those machines."
     His ears flicked. "They are an idea. Some years back a master named Feshjahn aesh Johis proposed a new kind of calculation engine."
     I followed along as he walked, pointing out items on shelves. The Mediators fell in behind. "Normally," he was saying, "a device is built for a single purpose. These clocks tell time; the calendar shows the phases of the moon; this device can add large numbers quickly and accurately.
     "Johis proposed a single engine that could do all these. An engine that would be able to change its capabilities by using different learnings written to its structure. Like the spindles on the lathe, but more flexible; able to be told what to do depending upon requirements. Does this make sense?"
     A mechanical universal computer? I'd seen their engineering capability — was that possible?
     "Johis believed it is, and some of the Guild's best concur. However..."
     "However no-one has been able to make one," I finished.
     "A," he confirmed and hissed: an exasperated sound like escaping steam. "Always parts: too small, breaking, wearing out. Make them stronger and they're too bulky and it takes more power to move them, which leads back to the first issue again."
     I nodded, waved agreement. "I know the problem."
     "Huhn, then you know how to solve it?"
     "I'm not sure. A good while ago a machinist proposed such a device. Small test versions were built and they worked. Smaller versions, but still big. The final version would've been the size of a building and was never completed."
     "Why?"
     "Money mostly, I think."
     "But it would have worked?"
     "I don't know. I heard of it, but I never knew the details."
     "Huhn. Pity."
     "A. What is this?" I changed the subject, peering at a contraption on a shelf. "That? Oh, a timed lamp. See, it will light the wick at a specified time. It will wind the wick up, then after a set interval it will damp it. And it will cover the wick if the lamp is tipped."
     "Sounds like they would be useful."
     Snort. "A failure."
     "Really?"
     "They still have to be wound regularly. And why send someone around winding them when they could be lighting them?"
     "That makes sense," I acknowledged.
     "Still, the lighting mechanism itself is popular, if considerably more expensive than a simple taper. Pull a chain and the lamp lights. Again, and it's snuffed."
     "Convenience sells," I noted.
     "Also," he sounded annoyed, "novelty. Not so much the skill and knowledge that goes into the manufacturing but the fact that they have something new to show at parties."
     Ah. Perhaps that was why he didn't seem to think a great deal of the ornamental side of their business.
     "It's so bad?"
     He gave me a look that was calculating in any species. "An unfortunate necessity. Their influence is considerable, so we can't afford to insult them. However, being referred to as 'the toymakers' is not something the Guild looks favorably upon."
     "Oh." I looked at the items in the stands we were passing: different sized brass gears frameworks. "So you are looking at serious applications. For industry and such?"
     "A. Where we can."
     "And there's already a considerable market for more... decorative devices? Custommade objects? They would be items like clocks, or those lamp-timers?"
     "Quite."
     I shrugged. "I'd have thought you'd have quite a market for clocks and timepieces. Something accurate you could carry in a pocket or on a wrist would be in great demand. And any business that wants to be competitive needs to keep time."
     His ears twitched back and he gave me another one of those looks, as if I'd said something weird. "Huhn. There are complications with that."
     "In what way?"
     "You know accurate timepieces are highly valued?"
     "That's not good?"
     "For military and naval applications."
     "I see." I glanced at the Mediators.
     "A. The military do pay very well for those. So making cheap and accurate devices readily available would annoy them considerably. As well as being against our own interests."
     I almost said something about smaller slices of a larger cake, but that wasn't my place.
     "A lot of military work?"
     "Some complex items and more [mundane] pieces: Timepieces and timers. Sextants. Matchlock mechanisms. Ranging calculators. The usual."
     "Only for sale to the military?"
     "Not necessarily. Anything is available to those that can afford it. But the military demand reliability and accuracy. Those are expensive."
     "Do you have a factories making them?"
     He looked affronted. "They are crafted by skill and hand. That is what the Guild is built around."
     They built fine and incredibly expensive pieces slowly and by hand. And they were proud of the fact.
     Which meant in an open capitalist market they'd get completely pwned in the race to the bottom. But how open was the market? Protectionism is what guilds were all about.
     "How accurate are the timepieces?" I asked as we entered another room, ducking my head under the lintel. It was like stepping into another building, with different flooring, a higher ceiling, whitewashed walls. Remembering the cobbled-together external architecture I reflected it probably was.
     "Very," he said. "I can show you samples of our best. For most purposes the tall-times are accurate to within seconds a day. Smaller ones, less so. Marine timepieces are... different."
     "No... swinging things? I don't know the word..."
     "You are referring to the [pendulum], I believe? No, they don't have those. They require compressed springs. As well as greater accuracy and special materials and techniques. The mechanisms are... most precise. We have recorded accuracy of seconds in a week."
     "Who buys things like that? I mean, individuals? Guilds?"
     "Guilds for the most part," he said. "Merchants and the wealthy. But of those buyers, those who can afford them often prefer the marine timepieces. They also work on rough roads."
     "Ah. And the devices with military application, do only the military buy those?"
     "Usually. But we wouldn't refuse to sell to others. However, those mechanisms are expensive and of very specific and limited use."
     "Amongst those, what would be the best sellers? Clocks?"
     He considered for a bit. "For volume I would think probably trigger mechanisms. But they are cheaper. Clocks would account for a lower number, but higher value. Then there are items like wind gauges and distance calculators and timers and locks."
     "Locks?"
     "For safes. The military like their secrets. So do a lot of guilds and merchant houses."
     "Ah."
     "And timing mechanisms are in steady demands. The military ones are used for explosives, but people turn them to other uses: watering plants, feeding animals, even lighting fires and lamps..." he snorted.
     "Instead of buying..." I offered.
     "... the lamp lighters," he finished.
     "That... doesn't make much sense to me," I confessed.
     He waved a hand. "They are more accurate and require less winding, but they are also more complex. It is not what we anticipated."
     I shrugged, human style. "It is not an uncommon problem. Perhaps take some time to find out what people want. We called it 'market study'. I think that idea works in your language."
     "Huhn," his tail lashed a few times. "How would we go about this study?"
     So as we walked we discussed the benefits of keeping accurate sales records and tracking trends; of focus groups and advertising and consumer tracking and the other tricks that let companies tell their clients what they actually wanted.
     But how do you tell someone that their entire way of life was going to be replaced by pieces of wire and forces they couldn't even see?
     Good question. I didn't have the faintest idea. And that was why I chickened out.
     And we left there many hours later. I sat in the carriage with a Mediator and wooden case containing a soccer-ball-sized assembly of polished brass armatures and cogs and spinning wheels and glass lenses that looked like a steampunk model of a bathysphere jammed into an astrolabe: a very expensive timepiece made by some of their best craftsmen. He'd gifted it to me and Jenes'ahn had told me it'd be impolite to refuse.
     "Did you learn what you wanted?" Jenes'ahn asked.
     "I thought he was the one asking the questions," I said.
     "You're not as subtle as you think. Timing mechanisms."
     "Oh. You mean was I asking about that because there might have been some devices sold recently that could have been used to say... destroy a bridge?"
     "Yes," she glared. "That."
     "No. I'm sure the Mediator Guild has already done that."
     "Mikah..." Her muzzle creased as she flashed teeth. "If the Guild thought they were associated this meeting would have been handled very differently."
     "They haven't talked to them? He was very polite for someone who'd never met me."
     "He was afraid. Anyone could smell it. A small guild trembling in the breeze of others' favor... they paid a great deal to meet with you. That timepiece is a considerable gift."
     I frowned at the box. "Not considered a bribe, is it?"
     "No. That is not an issue."
     "Then... those questions got him nervous?"
     "No. Probably the same reason ah Ties wasn't invited: they have their skills and trade knowledge to protect. They're afraid of potential competition like him learning it. And — of course — they're afraid of how much you already know. Although you didn't tell him much, a?"
     "Honestly, I'm not sure how much I could tell him."
     "Not everything, obviously."
     "What do you mean?"
     "I mean: none of your devices use gearwork." She glowered. She did that well. "Everything the guild showed you, all those clockwork mechanisms, and your little glass boxes can do all that and more. I think that says something about the future of the guild."
     I sighed. "We have clockmakers. Their work is sometimes so fine you can't see it. They make clocks, mechanical things that are... expensive."
     "You don't have any."
     "I was never that rich," I said.
     "So, luxury toys."
     "And locks are always needed. And devices — tools — for industries you don't have yet. The Guild here... they can't make those, but their skills are useful ones."
     "Even if the guild itself is not?"
     "Your words, not mine."
     Jenes'ahn snorted and her muzzle twisted as if she were working a piece of food out of her teeth. "Mikah, sometimes... Do you know what would happen if they learned that?"
     "Which is why I didn't say it. And I did say they have value, just perhaps not in the way they expect."
     She considered. "What would you suggest as the best course for their guild?"
     "Continue with locks, clocks, and fine instruments. Especially precise measuring tools. Those will be needed more and more. In the longer game, automatons will have their place."
     "What?" she growled. "You perhaps want to use them as workers?"
     "Someday," I said. "You know, you do need to be a bit more flexible in your thinking."
     She scowled. Winced. Tried to cover it.
     "How's your ear?" I asked after a few awkward seconds.
     There were a few more painful beats, then she said. "Sore."
     There was a scallop-edged bite missing from the top and holes through other parts. It looked... tatty. "But it's healing all right?"
     "A." She didn't sound pleased.
     "Could've been worse?" I offered. "A bit lower..."
     "Was what you wished for?" she rumbled.
     "Your words, not mine," I said and she glowered again. "Oh, come on," I protested. "You are a pain in the ears, but I've never wanted that."
     "You seemed to on the ship."
     Okay, that was an unexpected shot, and it hit. I swallowed. I looked at her, that Guildsanctioned shadow. She was like angry wallpaper that you got used to. But she was there and no matter how she buried them she had to have emotions, hopes, desires, dreams.
     "You know what Shyia — what the Guild — did to me. To Chihirae."
     "I know what my orders were."
     "I've heard that before, sometimes from people standing in front of burning villages. I Don't know what your orders were, but I know that they hurt me. I can live with that. They also threatened Chihirae, and I will not live with that. I know it wasn't just you, but that time you were the closest. I struck at that. I shouldn't have. I apologize."
     Her face went impassive, which could've meant she was actually surprised. "You are apologizing to me?"
     "A. I think I am."
     "Huhn," she slowly gestured 'yes', an accepting gesture. "Sometimes I think there might be some hope for you."
     "You say the nicest things."
     "Then I have to wonder what you're up to."
     I sighed. "Can't say I didn't try."
     The rest of the trip we sat and listened to the clock ticking.

The soiree that night wasn't fancy dress, but the high and mighty who attended still dressed to impress. Mingling in the palace reception rooms were raiments and accessories of gold and silver and rarer things. Fine cloth and leather. Some wore interpretations of my clothes; a couple were wearing gowns that resembled Chihirae's sartorial debut. I was fairly sure they were all female. Well, mostly.
     There were formal introductions with Rraerch and Chaeitch. There was formal talk while Mediators lurked. The Rris nobles greeted me, questions were asked. I told my tale more times than I can recall. Most of the time the conversation was civil and polite. At least on the surface; I'm not wired to instinctively interpret the deepest subtleties of Rris mannerisms, but still felt that in some of those I spoke with the civility didn't reach the eyes.
     If that was the case they kept a tight rein on their feelings. No-one was stupid enough to make a scene in public.
     So they put on a pleasant countenance and asked their questions. Sometimes the Mediators interrupted when someone was being pushy or heading down forbidden paths. Sometimes they cut in for no reason I was immediately aware of. I suppose someone was trying to be sneaky.
     So I followed the usual routine: be calm, be polite, behave.
     Eventually I ended up over by the canapes where Chaeitch was stacking his plate. "You're doing well," he said. "No assassination attempts tonight."
     "I think some of these might have been tempted to try," I murmured.
     "Huhn, just don't give them any excuses... and here's his highness."
     "What?" I turned to find the Bluebetter king approaching, the crowd melting aside. "Sir."
     "Ah Rihey," he said, a wide-bowled glass goblet resting in his hand. "A busy day. I hear the Clockmakers are satisfied, albeit confused."
     "Pleased to be of assistance," I said. "I think."
     "And I have some other news that may be of interest to you: there is to be another production of that play you were enquiring about."
     I looked at Chaeitch, who looked surprised. "That is of interest," I said cautiously.
     "An invitation was extended to you and the Land of Water embassy by the playwrights and Writers and Scribes guilds. They ask if you would attend a showing."
     "Very decent of them," Chaeitch ventured.
     "Quite," his lordship rumbled. "In two nights a performance at the Largest Playhouse, followed by a reception and late meal at the Embassy who will host you for the night. You are still interested in attending?"
     "Very," I said. "Please extend my thanks to the Guilds."
     "I'm certain you can do that when you meet with them. They're certainly anticipating it most eagerly. "
     "I will. And thank you, sir, for considering my request."
     The Rris king flicked an ear and turned away, sipping from the goblet as he stalked away with entourage in tow. The muted white noise of Rris conversation in the room climbed momentarily and over the heads I could see him engage another set of nobles.
     "Generous of them," Chaeitch mused.
     "They've been showing us boilers and bakeries, why not this too?"
     At that point Rraerch materialized at my shoulder. "I saw his lordship speaking with you. What was that about?"
     "Apparently," Chaeitch said, "there will be a special showing of a particular play for Mikah."
     "Huhn," she looked thoughtful, then asked me, "You're sure you want to see this?"
     "Oh, yes." I smiled carefully. "I'm sure it will be quite entertaining."

Chaeitch and Rraerch bade me goodnight in the hall outside my quarters before heading off to their own rooms. I closed the door and leaned against the wall, waiting quietly. When the voices had died I waited a little longer, then opened it again. The guards stiffened.
     "Ah, Blunt," I said. "Have you got a second?"
     "Sir?" he asked warily.
     "You have a cleaning kit for your pistol?" I nodded at the firearm on his bandoleer.
     "Yes, sir?" he said cautiously.
     "Can I borrow it? I neglected to pack my own."
     Blunt and his colleague exchanged looks. His ears were vibrating with the effort to keep them up. He didn't quite grimace when he said, "Very good, sir."
     "Oh, and I'm not very good at using these things so I might need some assistance."
     "Yes, sir." Now he just sounded resigned. I led him inside, to the drawing room.
     The cleaning kit was a simple roll of leather with a few tools and some oil. I unrolled that on an expensive table and laid the silver revolver out on a cloth alongside. He looked interested as I popped the cylinder out, and then he showed me how to clean the thing properly. His own muzzle-loading pistols had a wire brush that doubled as a ramrod. That fitted the bore of the revolver I was cleaning to scrub the barrel and cylinder out. Then there was an oilcloth to push through, followed by a careful cleaning of the cylinder pin and mechanisms.
     "Is this all you require?" he asked as I wiped metal with a lightly oiled cloth.
     "Since you ask," I said, "no. There was one other thing."
     He winced. "Sir..."
     "I don't think this will get you in trouble. It's some information I need. Which I can't get... discreetly." I set the pistol down.
     "Discreetly."
     "A. As in no-one else knowing about it."
     Now his ears did flick back. "I think this does sound like trouble, sir."
     "Just listen, a? Then say yes or no."
     "Very well, sir," he didn't sound enthusiastic. I told him. It didn't take long.

Two more days of meetings and tours and show-pony stuff.
     There were some long and dry discussions with embassy secretaries and Rraerch about Land of Water's plans and how Bluebetter could involve themselves, how they could benefit. They were always interested in the information and ideas, but loathe to actually commit to anything.
     Hours were spent on a tour of the southern districts of the city, on the outskirts beyond the remains of old town walls where a freezing wind was whipping flags back and forth. There was a canal being extended and locks were under construction. The whole site was an open, exposed trench you could drop a house into, cut through frozen slush and mud. Even in winter there were teams of Rris working, cartloads of materials arriving and departing, earth being dug, stone and brick being laid as the trench reached further inland. And despite a pale winter sun and multiple layers of clothing, I was chilled through from the blasting wind.
     Didn't seem to bother the Rris much.
     From there it was an inspection of a location where they were considering a bridge, but it was a considerable span and shipping traffic needed to pass. How would we have done it? A high, single span end-point suspension probably. And how would you construct those? The span would surely collapse under its own weight; towers would be pulled over. Suspended bridge? You would hang it with chains?
     No. The materials weren't unknown. Smither Engineering and Land-of-Water had new materials and techniques that would make it possible. I could tell what I knew, but Chaeitch was the one who'd figured out the actual real technical details or manufacturing that material. You'd have to talk with him.
     They grumbled about that. But that was why I was there: I could point them in certain directions, tell them what was possible and even give specifics on some things. But was a hell of a lot more required than that. Telling someone that a small electrical device can provide light is simple — knowing all the steps in manufacturing an LED is something else. I'd provided information and it was people like Chaeitch and Smither Industries that'd provided the ability to act on that information. Now, I could provide that same information to Bluebetter, but then they'd have to go through the same efforts that Land of Water already had.
     Alternatively, they could buy the information from Land of Water. Which, while expensive, would probably turn out to be cheaper than doing all the research and experimentation and construction themselves.
     But there was almost certainly probably pride at play as well. If they saw purchasing that information as lowering themselves, then would they want to do it? Then the final option might be what all nation states see themselves as entitled to: stealing it. Now that would put the cat amongst the pigeons.
     At that time that wasn't my concern.
     So I told them what I knew could be done and let things go from there.

It was near midnight when I returned to my suite, but still staff materialized as the door closed behind me. They helped me shrug out of the dripping coat. They took the ice-crusted boots and the crackling scarf. They mopped away the muddy footprints and melt water. All done before I was really aware.
     Yeircaez asked me if I wished to eat.
     "Thank you," I said. I was starving.
     "And her ladyship was enquiring as to when you would return."
     Things had run a little later than expected. "She didn't wait up, did she?"
     "She did ask to be informed when you returned."
     "Oh. Well, if she's asleep, don't wake her."
     "Yes, sir," the steward said. "Will you be accepting visitors?"
     "After I wash," I sighed and rubbed icy water from my beard. "And only if they have a really good reason."
     There was plenty of hot water. That eased some of the ache in extremities and in old scar tissue that was making itself felt. I sort of lost track of time standing in the heat and steam. When I emerged the bathroom was a haze of fog and my fingers were tingling. I grabbed a robe and headed for food.
     "You took your time," her ladyship greeted me around a mouthful of something good-smelling. "You're alright?"
     I sat and lifted a cover on a dish: steamed rolls. "Just tired and cold and hungry. Winter is supposed to be kept outside, you know."
     She flicked an ear back. "I thought they would have known. They're being rude?"
     "That might be bad for them." I nibbled, then took a bite and mumbled through the mouthful, "I think they don't realize. Maybe forgetful?"
     "Possible. You are a delicate flower," she said.
     I gave her a carefully crafted withering look. She smirked and popped a chunk of braised meat between needle teeth. "You need to work on that. And are you sure about tomorrow night?"
     "Why do people keep asking that?" I asked.
     "You have seen the play. On your box."
     "A. But I'd like to see the real thing."
     "You think they'll change it?"
     I waved a shrug. "I don't know. And even if they do, it'll be interesting to see what they think I would be upset about."
     "Hnnn, being labelled a 'beast' doesn't upset you?"
     "What did you first call me? When you first saw me?"
     An ear twitched back. "Oh. Well..."
     "You get accustomed to that kind of thing."
     "It still doesn't mean it's... polite." She munched on another mouthful, looking uncharacteristically sober. "And there are other things there."
     "Really? I hadn't noticed."
     Her tail lashed. "You know what I mean. And you're sure you want to see that? It'll be a public place — you'll be watching the play; they'll be watching you."
     "Again, not the first time."
     She stared at me, chewing noisily. Then swallowed. "Hai, so. If you're sure about this, then so be it." She sighed and took a bite from the roll. A startled expression flashed across her face and she looked at the food, then pulled it open. "Rot. I thought the palace kitchens would get all..." She trailed off as she pulled out a lump. Unfolded it. "What's this?"
     "Fortunes now? What does it say?"
     "It's..." she turned the scrap over and squinted. "Four up, Creek Lane, Tideside? What does this mean?"
     It meant that Blunt hadn't been able to sneak off and see me so he was playing spy clichés. That was risky: It could've fallen into someone else's hands. It had fallen into someone else's hands.
     "It means someone's not being careful when they cook?" I suggested. "Just put it on the side of your plate and eat the rest."
     "I'm surprised," she said as she dropped the scrap on the tray. "Your staff is usually better than that."
     "I think they've got a lot on their plates."
     She considered. "That means they're busy? That they have a lot to deal with?"
     "A."
     "Huhn." She chewed a bit more. "As a metaphor I think it's underdone."
     I picked a hot roll off the tray and took a bite. "As a pastry I think they're fine."
     "Just don't choke on an errant book. And I understand that there is a function to attend at the Land of Water embassy after this entertainment."
     "A. That is the plan. You sure you don't want to..."
     "No," she tipped her hand and champed down on another pastry. "I've had my fill of those, thank you. Anyway, is there a reason for it? Land of Water can talk to you any time they want. A reminder of that?"
     "Political grooming, I think might describe it. Make... connections here? Talking to possible customers? Important ones. Does that make sense?"
     She chewed noisily, then said, "A. It does. So, then, they're parading you around like a cub with a ribbon on its tail."
     "Sounds about right."
     "Huhn," she hurumphed and considered her food again before venturing: "Mikah, you're sure about tomorrow?"
     That question sounded... I tried to read something past the façade. "You're worried about this?"
     "Not worried. I just think... if something could happen, it would be at such a time."
     "You could say that about this whole journey."
     "I think I did, a? I think there might be a physical danger, but I am more concerned that you will see something you don't like. I don't like seeing you damaged like that."
     I shrugged. "And I think I'm expecting it."
     "You accept it?"
     "It helps there're people who don't," I said. "Thank you."
     A soft laugh, a chitter, a more relaxed cant to her tufted ears. "We know you. It takes time to happen, but it does happen."
     "Perhaps if more people were like you."
     Another flick of the ears and she tipped her head, amber eyes on me. "That would make the world a boring place, a?"
     "Don't sell yourself short. You're one of the good people. Not enough of those. Besides, you have pretty eyes."
     "Huhn," she rumbled, stroking her mutton-chop cheek tufts. "Flattery. Are you after sex tonight?"
     "It's the truth. Besides, I'm so tired I don't think I can even stand up."
     "I'm sure I can help you with that," she grinned and licked her chops.
     "You've got a one-track mind," I said. "I'm afraid it's not going to happen tonight though. I don't think even that dangerous tongue can do it."
     "Ah, rot," she sighed. "Find someone who doesn't have to wait for the right time, and it's never the right time. Every step into a puddle, a? Well, you should get your food and your rest then." She stood, displayed a tongue-curling yawn. "I'll bid you a good evening and good sleep then. Oh, incidentally, you know it will be considered an occasion. You will have to dress accordingly."
     "Damn! I'll have to wear pants?"
     "If you want to grow icicles down there, that's your choice. Something a little more elegant might serve better. Just a suggestion, a?"
     And she was gone.
     I finished my meal, listening to the wind winding up outside. Then I yawned and stretched.
     "Will there be anything else, sir?" Yeircaez was standing at the door.
     "No, thank you," I said. "I'll retire now."
     "Very good, sir."
     "Oh, just one thing."
     "Sir?"
     "Could you please see if his lordship would have time for a quick meeting tomorrow. First thing."
     Not a twitch of surprise. "I will enquire."
     "And... discreetly, if possible. If you know what I mean."
     "Yes, sir. I believe I understand. Do you wish to be informed tonight?"
     "Not necessary. Just wake me tomorrow if it is acceptable."
     "Very good, sir."
     "Thank you."
     The Rris steward inclined his head and was gone without a sound. I took a deep breath. In for a penny...
     I headed off to bed to chase a restless night's sleep.

"Sir?"
     The voice pulled me from vague dreams of twisting hallways and alien faces.
     "Sir? You are awake?"
     I flopped over and thought I opened my eyes. It was still black. I heaved a breath. "I am now," I said to the darkness.
     "Sir, his lordship will expect you in a half hour. That will give you some time to make yourself presentable. Is that agreeable?"
     I blinked, pinched the bridge of my nose. "A. Quite. Thank you."
     There was a sense of movement, a shadow departing. Seconds later the staff who must've been waiting arrived with lights to help me get ready.
     Half an hour later a private door to the King's quarters was opening before me. I breathed steadily, staying calm, willing confidence. They could smell nervousness.
     This time there were no Mediators in sight as my escort led me through the guest hall to the king's dining area and ushered me in. Lamps were lit. Dark velvet wallpaper drank light while flickering candle flames glittered against gold and silver and copper and the dark windowpanes.
     Ah Thes'ita was seated at the low table, plate before him, a sliver of bright pink fish skewered on a fork held in one hand while the other traced patterns across the characters written on papers set to the side. Did that paperwork never end?
     "Please," he said without looking up. "Sit."
     I sat. Staff moved behind me and plates and bowls appeared: meat and sauces, nuts, berries, eggs, breads, wine. His lordship pushed his papers aside and sat up. he had spectacles perched on his muzzle.
     "An interesting request for a meeting," he said. "I take it you do not wish to discuss business. Without a Mediator here that would be a breach of confidence."
     "I wanted to thank you," I said. "For arranging this outing tonight. Thank you."
     "You are quite welcome," he said. "And that was it?"
     "And there was one other thing."
     "Huhn," he rumbled thoughtfully. He hadn't moved a milliwhisker. "Let's hear it."
     I told him. He still didn't move.
     "That is an odd request," he finally said. "I don't see that it goes against any terms set down by any party. However, it would not be popular with your hosts or the Guild."
     "I understand. I might be best for all if it were done discreetly."
     "A," he cautiously agreed. "It is possible. However, if something were to happen as a result of this, it would reflect poorly indeed on Bluebetter. I'm afraid see the risk would outweigh any benefit."
     I sighed and nodded. "Then, if there was a little more benefit?"
     He flicked an ear and picked up a small porcelain bowl. Lapped delicately. "You have something in mind?"
     "Perhaps some information?"
     "The Guild would not like to hear that."
     "Nothing new. Nothing you don't already have."
     "Hnnn, so something we already have and don't know about. You would use that as a token? You could be sure we wouldn't simply take it?"
     "It is perhaps not as simple as you think. And I do know other things."
     "Such as?"
     "The Hilltop Folly. How did you make the world believe that?"
     That feint almost hit. There was a twitch there, a sudden flex of his pupils. "Your meaning?" he asked smoothly.
     "My kind knows something of the value of information. To get a message from one side of the country to the other in a day when no-one else can, that is valuable."
     "Do you think so?"
     "I know so. Apparently others do too. I did happen to notice one of those towers in the financial area. It was operating. If there's one type of person who will latch onto anything that can make them money, that would be bankers. So, they must consider the expense of building and operating one of those tower to be worthwhile, a?"
     He stared at me. Eventually he said, "Why didn't you open with this? A threat to mention that to your hosts would be worth your favor."
     I waved a shrug. "My other suggestion is more beneficial to all. Better to start off with a pleasant note, a?"
     "Hnnn," he mused.
     "Your reply, sir?" I asked. "I think a Mediator will probably be arriving here within the next two minutes."
     "That soon?"
     "Give or take."
     He raised the bowl again, sipped again, watched me. "Very well: your offer is accepted. You will get what you asked for. And your information?"
     "You have a plant in your conservatory, a tree, brought back from the southern continent. It's a source of an extremely useful material. Useful for a lot of things. Industry and other things. Valuable."
     "And Land-of-Water would not be interested?"
     "They certainly would be, but the climate isn't right to grow them. Too cold."
     "And this tree is?"
     "I'll let you know when our deal is done," I said. "Hell, you know it's there now. It's only time to find it. I'll just speed it up a little."
     "Not too trusting, a?" he asked, his ears twitching.
     "Thank you," I smiled carefully. Then said a bit more loudly, "Thank you, sir for the opportunity tonight."
     By then even I could hear the commotion outside, followed by the door banging open.
     "What is this? What are you doing here?"
     I turned to give a furiously blank-faced Jenes'ahn a nod. "And good morning to you to, Constable. I was invited, remember?"
     "Our guest was just thanking me for this evening's arrangements," the Rris king said, entirely truthfully.
     "And eating breakfast," I said and held up a dish of folded pastries. "Join us?"

The theater was fancier than the last one; a place built with money, for money. It followed the same basic layout — with the semi-circular stage surrounded by spectators — but everything was bigger, more polished, older, more refined. There was a high roof covering the stage. There were arching columns of wood, polished and carved. Lighting was dim, save for the gas lamps and reflecting mirrors throwing light onto the stage. Flags hung from rafter There were tiers of overlooking balconies. Along those balconies were niches. In those niches crouched worn stone statues, growling or leering at the stage. The weathering on those old stones reminded me of ancient ruins in the hills.
     There was a crowd that night. From up in the boxes we looked down on the rest of the theatre. In the dim light the stalls were a milling field of with tawny furry heads, tufted ears, and colored clothes. Other balconies were occupied with fine-dressed highborn and socialites, or whatever the Rris equivalent was. For a play that 'wasn't well considered', there seemed to be a real turnout. How much of that was simply because it had suddenly become the place to be seen?
     When we'd entered that evening there'd been the metaphorical handshakes. Chaeitch and Rraerch were fish in water — pleasant smiles, pressing the flesh and doing all the right things. Chihirae and myself were a little less fluent. And I was in my heavy coat, the pale leather cleaned and patched and polished. The dress clothes under that were showy, but nothing compared with highborn finery.
     The Land-of-Water ambassador, the dandelion-like Ah Fefthri, was there to greet our party and act as a knowledgeable buffer between us and the local dignitaries. There were the introductions with sponsors from the Writers and the Playwrights guilds. They were effusively gracious, bowing and welcoming me. They were friendly and eager and so anxious. They most likely wielded little influence among the powerful guilds, and to have an opportunity where their trade was in demand, that was something they wanted to milk as much as they could. I didn't miss the expressions on some of the bigger merchants: disdainful, but trying not to be too obvious about it.
     But, they were in the playwrights' house now — they had to show at least a semblance of respect. And, as you'd expect, the playwrights were drawing everything they could out of it.
     After the welcomes and the gratitudes we'd been ushered to our seats up in the stalls. A pair of Mediators I didn't know were waiting at the door to a private box and they had quiet words with Rohinia before they let us in. Perhaps they were taking bomb threats more seriously.
     Of course the box was well-appointed. It was set back, above the audience and with an excellent view. There were cushions and throw rugs, food and drinks, even a metal brazier filled with glowing coals. That added a scent of burnt metal to that of aged wood and food and oil and a lot of Rris. We were far enough back that we weren't obvious, but I saw a continuous flash of eyeshine indicating that Rris were looking our way.
     Our party settled themselves. The ambassador was over by Rraerch, pointing out items of interest in the theater. Chihirae sat herself beside me with a chitter, gave me a sidelong look. "Comfortable?"
     "A. Quite."
     "Looks like they prepared for you," she noted.
     "I hope everything is satisfactory," Ah Fefthri added.
     "Hah! Food here," Chaeitch noted with his mouth already full.
     I inspected the offerings. "Someone told them what I like."
     "Don't look at me," he champed.
     "I'd never accuse you of gossiping about me."
     Ah Fefthri had that uncertain look, but Chihirae chittered. "Just... watch the rotted play, a?"
     So, we did.
     Compared with the bootleg I'd seen, there were differences: Production values were better. The set was larger, brighter, the costumes flashier. There were multiple tiers to the stage, rooms divided by partitions of paper panels. Some dialogue had changed, but not in ways I'd expected. It'd been streamlined, honed, the obvious message given more of a point. Characters had been altered and shifted and actually bore some disturbingly familiar traits. But the story was still the same. There were the travelers, the inn, the bloody night of intrigue and confusion that vacillated between whodunit and creature-feature.
     And — of course — the beast was still there. And still embarrassing.
     The first appearance drew were audible reactions from the crowd — yowls and hisses. I heard Chaeitch chitter. Chihirae's ears twitched back and fought upright again. There was nothing dignified or endearing about that portrayal.
     And as the night went on, as the bodies started to stack up, that form was backlit against those paper walls. And unlike a movie, the audience participated: down in the stalls they snarled when an un-Rris shadow moved against the screens, yowling as stage-thunder rolled and murder was done in the dark, shouted cheerful insults and imprecations at the confusion on stage.
     From the tail of my eye I caught the covert glances the others threw my way.
     And the last act came down. The treachery and revelation. The ensuing fight was flashier than the one I'd seen on that little screen. Fires glowed red through smoke bombs. Lights flashed as figures whirled and flailed in the haze and firecrackers rattled like popcorn in a drum. The clouds and smell of gunpowder saturated the theatre and dredged up...
     And Chihirae's ears were flat back as the beast ran amok. I felt that sinking feeling — I hadn't considered that.
     I touched her arm and felt the bunched muscles jump. "We can go," I suggested quietly.
     She didn't look at me, but lowered her head and then very deliberately shook it and pointedly turned back to the spectacle on the stage.
     I opened my mouth. Shut it again. That feeling was telling me it'd make it worse.
     I kept it shut.
     And at the end of it all, the hulking outlandish form loomed over the smaller servant girl.
     That whole exchange remained the same.
     And at the end of it there was no applause. As the actors retreated from the stage the house rustled with Rris conversation. I understood that indicated approval — disapproval would have been more obvious.
     "Your thoughts?" Rraerch asked me. Ah Fefthri looked apprehensive. Chaeitch was scratching his chin, regarding the stage.
     "Could have been worse, I think," I said.
     "You understate," Chaeitch grunted and turned to the subdued Chihirae. "Hai, aesh Hiasamra'this, you have an opinion?"
     Chihirae blinked back to the here-and-now. "It was... that was quite an experience." It was a diplomatic response.
     "Don't worry," I said quietly. "A lot of people didn't enjoy it the first time through."
     "You..." Chaeitch started to say, then understood. "Huhn. A. Quite."
     "I shouldn't have..." I started to say.
     "No," Chihirae interjected and sighed, rolled her shoulders, "I wanted to. It was just.. the smoke and smells were... They just surprised me."
     "A," Chaeitch scratched his muzzle and looked back at the house where the crowd was milling around the stage still partially obscured by pyrotechnic haze. "Perhaps they overdid it a little?"
     "A touch," Rraerch agreed.
     Chihirae chittered, scratched her fingers through the winter pelt on her chest. "Overreacting, a?"
     "No." I reached over to brush some of that tufted fur smooth again. "Just some memories that need to burn out."
     "I think we all have some of those," Chaeitch growled, gingerly touching his truncated ear.
     A polite scratch sounded on the door before it opened to admit Hedia, who sketched a quick bow. "Good evening, honored guests. I hope everything met with your approval."
     "No complaints," I said and I think Rraerch winced.
     "You enjoyed the show?" Hedia had that same look the Land-of-Water ambassador was wearing: anxious apprehension.
     "Not quite what I'd been expecting," I said. "Although the way they portrayed Chaeitch was a little odd: he's not that tall and has more fur."
     Hedia hesitated, eyes darting to the others for some cue on how to respond to that.
     "Mikah," Chihirae hissed.
     "Ah. Yes, sir," Hedia finally said. "Quite. Huhn. You are due at the embassy reception, but there's some time to meet with the producers again. I'm sure they'll value your opinion."
     "I believe he was trying to be clever," Rraerch said, somewhat apologetically. "Perhaps we'd better simply make for the embassy before he tries it again and injures himself."
     "And everyone's a comedian," I sighed and touched Chihirae's arm. "You'll be okay?"
     "I'll be hokai," she said, then laughed. "Don't look like that. I'll be fine. As for you, don't you go looking for trouble, a?"
     "Last thing on my mind," I lied.

I'd expected the Land-of-Water embassy to be an expensive compound somewhere in the center of the city. I hadn't expected a house on the outskirts.
     Of course, it was a nice house. Surrounded by nice grounds. And nice, high walls. At the hour we arrived the sun was long-gone. Lights were burning in the stone gatehouse where guards in Land-of-Water livery opened the gates and ushered our carriages through. A few moments of wooded darkness followed, and then we were out onto a moonlit drive and passing by a row of parked carriages with drivers attending their animals. None of those carriages looked cheap.
     "Looks like we're the latecomers," Chaeitch observed.
     The scrunching sound of iron-bound wheels on gravel changed to the hollow rumbling of iron on icy flagstone as we drew up to a loop in front of an elegant stone mansion.
     Georgian? Edwardian? There was a touch of something approaching those in the architecture. That was the necessity of physics and architecture speaking. The rest was a great deal more of Rris influence and aesthetics. Dressed stone and carved window frames and chimney stacks disguised as columns. There was copper on the roof and good glass in the latticed windows. Lamps glowed inside, lighting the place up like a Vegas casino amidst the snow-covered and tree-shrouded grounds.
     Our carriages halted at the foot of steps leading up to a front portico and a wide-open front door flanked by a pair of house guards in armor polished bright enough to reflect the carriage lamps. The Mediators were out first, looking around alertly as the other Rris sorted themselves out, adjusted clothing and brushing fur smooth. Rraerch caught at my coat, trying to rub away a smudge of soot I'd picked up from standing too close to a lamp or something. By the time we'd gotten ourselves into order staff from the embassy were hurrying down to meet us.
     Ah Fefthri consulted briefly with a few of his people, listening as a Rris on his staff muttered sotto-voce for a while, and then returning a few quick orders with gestures towards us. They hurried off toward our baggage while the Ambassador turned back to us and waved an open hand toward the door. "Welcome and offerings of hearth and home to you. A few guests — notables of value to Land-of-Water — have expressed interest in meeting with our guest here. Necessity does dictate the usual formalities and considerations are shown, so I am afraid there will be some conversation of the kind I understand you are growing weary of. If you can tolerate that for a while, there will be evening meal to follow."
     The front doors were wide open. Inside lights were burning. There was a lot of polished wood and white plaster. The air smelled of winter and lamp oil and smoke and cooking and Rris. A staircase wound up to the first floor. Off to the right were double doors of bright blue lacquer chased with stylized gold branches and leaves. The sound of Rris voices was loudest through there.
     "The guest wing is at your disposal," the Ambassador gestured to the left. "Ah Rihey, your room is heated. And there's accommodation for your staff. My own can assist your people with the baggage, if that is all right with you."
     "Fine," Rraerch said. "We packed light."
     "Excellent. If you require anything, please ask; I can assure you my staff are discreet. Now," he said, his hands working — rubbing at one furry finger at a time, "this is supposed to be a [social/ informal] gathering; discussion of business is discouraged. So, there shouldn't be any... sensitive issues."
     Oh, good, I thought. That meant they would be mostly personal questions.
     "And I understand you've had experience at this, so just do what has worked before, a? So, this way, please."
     As he led the way through the blue door I reflected that perhaps that wasn't such sound advice. But, we followed, through a vestibule to the parlor where visitors could be met without taking them into the home proper. This wasn't a dusty little parlor off the front hall. Nor was it an overbearing ballroom. This was a room large enough to host many visitors and make a bit of a statement while doing so. It was opulent, with carved wooden paneling on walls and ceiling. There were rugs and paintings, statues and carvings. Balcony doors were open, the winter chill taking the worst of the fug from a room heated by fires and Rris.
     Once again I had that atavistic shiver crawl up my back as a roomful of Rris turned to stare. Not enough to crowd the place, but there were enough for it to be... busy. There were perhaps a little over a dozen, in little scattered groups. The conversations fell away into a pit of silence we entered, the groups turning to stare. And they did, openly for a few seconds before I saw — one after another — almost physical jolts of realization strike the Rris and they desperately tried to look around, look casual, look at anything but me. Had their attendance been dependent on terms and conditions? Don't stare at the creature...
     "Gracious guests," the Ambassador spoke into the awkward silence. "Thank you for your patience. Our visitors from Shattered Water are here. They're happy to participate in civilized discourse. And the Guild is here to observe."
     Attentions twitched past us, to the unimposing figure of Jenes'ahn lurking in the background.
     "For now," the Ambassador said as he turned to us, "there are a few hours to evening meal. So, please, mingle."
     There certainly were a few hours, and they felt like it. The expensively-dressed people there weren't necessarily the makers, but rather the movers: the financiers, and the people behind the financiers. Some of them were there to see what their investments might be getting them, but others were there because it was a free ticket to the greatest show in town. And because they were important to various people and various schemes, I had to politely bear it while they stared, while they asked the usual ridiculous questions. The more imaginative came up with new ridiculous questions. Then they retreated to whisper amongst themselves.
     Honestly, it was a welcome reprieve when someone tried to bend the rules and talk a bit of business. But, it was a small unpleasantness. And, as things tend to be, it was eventually done. The Ambassador called time and gave his thanks and the guests trickled away. Through the open windows I could hear the activity on the front drive as the voices died down and carriage after carriage clattered away. The bite of the freezing fresh air was a welcome wake up after a room full of Rris, smoke, and the smell of Rris. And it was a few quiet moments to myself where I could try and unclench my fists and twanging nerves.
     "You done?" Jenes'ahn was waiting, hands in the pockets of her worn road coat, watching me.
     "I wasn't aware I'd even started," I said. She snorted and wrinkled her muzzle. Behind her, a trio of bustling staff were clearing away trays of debris from the soiree. "They're ready for dinner. Are you going to be joining us?"
     I rolled my shoulders and felt something pop. Winced at a twinge through old scars. "Might as well, since they went to the trouble of having one."
     She sighed and gestured for me to follow.

"I will offer apologies for the exuberance of our guests," the Ambassador said from across the table. "They can be tiresome, but also useful, so it can pay to keep them happy. I hope you understand."
     "Of course," I said, spearing one of the funny little glazed meatballs with a fork. "I'm almost used to it by now."
     "Excellent," he said, followed by the slightest hitch as his brain caught up with what I'd actually said. "Ah, very good. I'm sure there's some way we can make it up to you."
     "I'm sure we'll think of something," I smiled. "But I understand, situations like that happen."
     Other Rris at the table watched and listened but didn't say anything. Tinkling of cutlery and dinnerware rang counterpoint to the crunching of bones in Rris jaws. Around the edge of the room lamps in milky white globes burned, reflected imperfectly from old mirrors of burnished metal and occasionally eclipsed by one of the professionally inconspicuous house staff busy ferrying dishes to and fro. Paintings hung in the gloom below the high ceiling, the ancient oils hazed by craqueluer and age. The big table was a lot newer, the wood lighter than the old timber paneling and boned to a glossy sheen. The cushions, however, were tooled leather worn almost smooth with use.
     Compared with the rest of the evening it was an informal meal. The ambassador, a couple of his staff, our group, and the pair of mediators. Those two ate little, but watched attentively. Finally were a trio of Land-of-Water Rris. They were introduced as wealthy merchants, but also as something that might have translated as cultural attachés. I wasn't sure that was accurate: they represented Land-of-Water's interests in Red Leaves, but they were also sources of information. Spies? To me that was a cliché old enough to be dastardly twirling its mustache. So perhaps it didn't mean the same thing here and they were as advertised; or perhaps the concept hadn't had time to percolate into the public conscious and the cliché actually worked; or perhaps everyone knew exactly what they were and it was all part of the game.
     I wasn't about to ask.
     Starters were first. While they were served the conversation orbited pleasantries. Once they were on the table, once the servants retired, that changed.
     "The dispatch for Shattered Water is being prepared," ambassador Ah Fefthri said as he plucked a capon from a tray. "What should I put in it? Good news?"
     Rraerch lapped from her drink. "Initial impressions are good," she said.
     "In what way?"
     "Reactions aren't actively hostile. Surprisingly positive in fact."
     "They're receptive?"
     "A. There's understandable concern from existing businesses — about being passed over or made obsolete or losing out to competition. They're seeing a change in the wind and it makes them nervous. We were a little concerned that they might not take what we were saying seriously. It certainly can sound more than a little... fantastic. Until you've met with Mikah, that is. However, those recent unrests seem to have been more convincing than any demonstration we could have given."
     "One way of looking at it," the ambassador snorted.
     "It does mean they actually believe we know something they don't. And they're concerned their competitors may get in ahead of them. It seems to be a war between urgency and caution. I believe that when one does eventually take the leap the others will claw in behind."
     Ah Fefthri chewed thoughtfully and then looked to the trio of merchants. "And how do you see things from your angle?"
     They were seated together and I supposed the one in the middle was the spokes-person. That one drummed fingers on the table. "It's as the lady says: they want the knowledge. Perhaps you are underestimating how badly."
     Ears perked up. That Rris leaned forward, looking around the table. "The government's under a lot of demands from a lot of people. They aren't open about it, but there're bared teeth in dealings."
     I frowned. "It had seemed quite... civil to me."
     "On the surface, quite. We didn't hear of this through our normal channels, but we think it's reliable. There is certainly considerable excitement and desperation in certain circles. Everyone wants this knowledge. All the machines and engines and techniques. And the weapons, of course."
     "Of course," I sighed.
     "As aesh Smither observed, a lot of them are concerned about their competitors getting ahead, and they don't want to let that happen. His lordship isn't helping matters. He's been leading them by the nose. He is always looking for support from every angle, and you, you are a very good weight on the scales. Some days you went sightseeing? That had people chewing the tables. They thought they were being passed by; that he was treating the matter frivolously."
     Another coughed. "They made some very one-sided deals to make sure they were included. Not in their favor."
     The Mediators were both looking at me and that was... not a good feeling. They were looking for excuses to get rid of me and what these guys were saying sounded like pretty strong reasons.
     "A. On the heels of the disturbances last year people are unsettled and willing to make rash promises."
     "So," Rraerch said, "The government knows this could turn and bite them?"
     "A," one of the so-called merchants said. "But if it doesn't, it will firm their position."
     "And," another ventured, "they might think that Land-of-Water will be more likely to offer this knowledge if they think that withholding it could cause instabilities here."
     The ambassador considered that. "Would that be any worse than some border lord arming his militia with repeaters and declaring state over a local pass or river?"
     "And the rail line?" Chaeitch spoke up. "What was the verdict on that?"
     The others blinked, looked at each other. "Oh. Well. Not bad."
     Another said, "Surprisingly good."
     "A. Although a lot of the enthusiasm would seem to lean toward what it could do for particular people. The carters want cheaper and faster transport; merchants want wider markets; better communication and so on."
     "And no-one is considering cost?" Rraerch asked.
     "Some of the more practically inclined — metalworkers, stonemasons, that sort — they certainly are. And the mention of new methods and techniques certainly has their attention. But, a lot of the others... not seriously. Some of them may be thinking that your guest here has a cheap and simple way of building it."
     "That wouldn't be unusual," I said. "But when it comes down to it, it will be expensive. Very. Currently, with existing tools, it would be impossible. Some of the knowledge I can provide makes it possible. And that knowledge can and certainly will be able to be used for other things."
     "And you don't think they might join this undertaking just long enough to take this knowledge and then something will happen that'll force them to retire?" one of the merchants said.
     "Would that be likely?" I asked.
     "Almost a certainty."
     "Which we anticipated," Rraerch said. "There are disincentives for scavengers like that."
     "'Scavengers', Huhn."
     "As Mikah put it, people who won't 'play nice'."
     "You know what that sort thinks of rules."
     "A. They will try to work around. We will try to prepare for that, but that is a concern for the future. What we are concerned with now is getting support for these initiatives. Once the influential people start to see it's a good idea others will follow."
     "Guilds, cities, and then countries?" the Rris asked.
     Rraerch waved a shrug. "We live in hope."
     "As do we all," the Ambassador sighed. "And now, a little more pragmatically, what's your plan for actually making this happen?"
     So our sales team rolled out their presentation pitch. Perhaps not having Powerpoint was a bonus because the people around the table nibbled and listened as Rraerch and Chaeitch gave an outline of their plans. They were a little vague for a number of reasons, not the least being they didn't want to lay all their cards on the table, even with their own embassy. But the ambassador and the others didn't seem to have a problem with this. They listened, they offered constructive criticism and advice on who might be most receptive; what sort of incentives might be effective to persuade indecisive individuals.
     After the starters came a pause in the business talk while staff bustled around charging glasses and producing more dishes: silver platters and tureens, covered pots of heavy crockery, spreads of cuts and slices of meats. I ended up with a bowl filled with a steaming casserole of meats, fruits and vegetables, dumplings, and a sauce thick enough to stand a spoon upright in. I was hungry enough that I didn't care.
     Once the staff had finished and departed the ambassador took up his spork and asked, "Assuming that Bluebetter does agree to all terms and joins in this endeavor — which is a feat in itself — what sort of investments would be required for this rail-line and what sort of returns are possible from it?" Then he took a mouthful of food and chewed, ears pricked as he awaited the reply.
     Money questions. Chaeitch and Rraerch fielded that. I'd heard it all before. I tried my own casserole and found it was hot and spiced. Heavily. That was a little unusual for Rris cooking, but it wasn't an unpleasant taste. And the dumplings...
     A furry hand snapped in a grabbed at my wrist, stopping my mouthful in midair.
     "What the fu..." I looked up. Jenes'ahn glared back.
     "Don't eat that," she growled. The dumpling slid off my spork and plopped back into the stew. Conversation around the table had stopped. So had the eating. People stared at their bowls and the hubbub started simultaneously:
     "Poison?"
     "How?"
     "I assure you there is nothing..."
     "Not poison," Jenes'ahn picked up my bowl and sniffed. "Not for us." She glared at the ambassador. "I thought you said none of the proscribed foodstuffs would be served."
     "That's correct," he said. "There were specific instructions. I forwarded them to the kitchen."
     "Then why is this sauce in these dumplings? Crushed [something] seed, I believe."
     "What's that?" I asked.
     "A poppy-seed extract," Chaeitch supplied.
     "That would affect you?" Jenes'ahn asked.
     "Yeah," I said after a few moments consideration. "A. I don't know how much, but it would probably do something."
     The ambassador froze, then bristled. "Constable, there will be answers. You have leave to do your duty."
     "I fully intend to," she growled.
     That was essentially it for dinner. The mediators stalked off to do their work and distant pandemonium ensued. Staff and guards rushed around looking concerned. Questions were asked. I was able to grab a few rolls before I was bundled off to the guest wing, out of the way.
     Out the windows I could see guards patrolling. I could hear shouting in the halls, but nobody was saying anything. I whiled away the time poking at the windows, wandering through the suite and inspecting the paintings and tapestries, pulling books off the shelves and going cross-eyed at the dense Rris script therein.
     It was later that Chaeitch dropped by to fill me in.
     "It looks like a mistake," he said, lighting his pipe.
     "A mistake," I echoed.
     "A. Apparently... there was a mislabeled pot in the kitchen. That seems to be why the wrong sauce was used."
     "So, not foul play?"
     "It would seem not," he said. "Just carelessness."
     And some time later still the Ambassador visited. "I have to offer apologies for tonight," he said. "What happened was inexcusable."
     "Happened before?" I asked.
     He hesitated. "I can't say it has."
     "Then the timing might seem a little suspicious?"
     "A," he agreed, looking a little annoyed. "But the cooks are not accustomed to... unusual dietary requirements. "
     I nodded. "I happen to have one who has adapted very well. Perhaps a raise to recognize his unique skills is in order."
     The ambassador stiffened. "Ah Rihey, my cooks are proud of their positions and their abilities. I have confidence that they would not risk all that in such a gamble."
     "And you can be sure they weren't threatened or blackmailed?"
     His ears flicked back. "The Guild is... investigating possibilities."
     "Ah," I nodded again.
     He sighed. "Meantime, all I can offer you is an assurance that malice was not intended and an apology for the carelessness."
     "Thank you," I gestured acknowledgement. Then said, "Actually, there is something else you might be able to offer: I assume you have an... unobtrusive back door out of here?"
     The ambassador stared at me.

It was the middle of the night and not quite snowing. Stars were hazy smears, the halfmoon a glowing eye behind a glowing ring. Icy flakes drifted in the darkness, glittering when they passed through moonbeams.
     There were guards out there. I watched them pass by from my place of concealment, until they passed out of sight around the corner. Then I carefully skirted the edges of the spotless blanket of snow covering the lawn to reach the garden path tucked into the shadows of a hedge bowed by snow. It led through the darkness to a patch of darker shadow in a back corner of the garden.
     Down some overgrown steps alongside a very prosaic-looking garden shed was a tiny gate. The gate was shut. Strands of ivy hung down over age-blackened wood and iron. It wasn't exactly a secret entrance, just... forgotten.
     The heavy bolts were newer than the rest of the door. They drew back easily enough — it wouldn't do to forget the key to your exit in an emergency. I pulled the door open and dialed my flashlight right down as I crouched to pass through. It wasn't a secret passage or anything that fanciful — it was an old culvert. A drain. A head-bangingly low arch of ancient brick over a frozen gutter and piles of trash and debris. The icy tunnel headed away under the embassy garden, the wall, and the road beyond to emerge in a thicket on the far side of the road, behind the embassy.
     I lurked in the bushes and watched the lane for a minute.
     No streetlights. No movement. Under the half-moon the snow-covered road was grey and white, churned where some traffic had passed. The embassy wall was old stone topped with ornate iron spikes. Behind that I could see the top floors of the house. There were lights on, but no noise. Nobody shouting.
     That was encouraging. As long as the ambassador kept his word; and as long as a whole bunch of other stuff didn't go wrong it might actually work.
     I pulled the muffler up to cover my face and set off along the lane. Snow squeaked under my boots. The footprints I was leaving were blindingly obvious and even walking in the existing wheel ruts probably wouldn't fool the most incompetent of trackers.
     Fortunately, I didn't have to walk too far. It looked like his highness had kept his word: A hundred meters along the lane a carriage was waiting with elk in the traceries. Plain, inconspicuous, but not cheap.
     The drivers were on the bench. A pair. Cloaked and hooded. The hoods turned as I approached and kept watching. No panic. That was reassuring.
     "You are waiting?" I asked.
     A hesitation before one growled, "Not any more. At your service, sir."
     I popped the latch and checked the cab. Clear. "You know the city?"
     "A."
     "Creek Lane, Tideside," I said as I clambered in. "Know it?"
     "Yes, sir," the driver rumbled and I heard the animals stir as the reigns were flicked and the carriage rumbled off.

About twenty minutes away was a residential street. It was in an older neighborhood near the waterfront, near an old creek. It wasn't one of the poorest areas, but the buildings had seen better days. They were mostly stone and wood. Some with stores on the ground floor, some in the Rris atrium-common style, others with small walled yards out front. A few streetlights glowed feebly — the cheap oil ones that only threw out enough light to stop someone walking into them. All they really lit were dirty snow-covered cobbles directly beneath them.
     Four-up was the fourth building up from the bridge over the dirty little creek. There was a wooden door in stone archway. Above it the upper stories hung out over the street. The roof was crooked slate. A feeble light glimmered in an upstairs window.
     A block down the street I sat back in the dark of the carriage and watched through the frost-speckled windows.
     So, what now? I could just go and knock on the door. What sort of reception would that have? Or I could...
     My procrastination was interrupted by a tap on the roof. "Sir," I heard the driver say quietly, "Something happening."
     It was a few seconds before I saw it — movement in the frosty darkness between street lamps.
     A single Rris, anonymous in a cloak, but that wasn't anything unusual on that freezing night. There'd been a couple of pedestrians that night, going about their business without fuss, but this felt different. This one was moving hurriedly, with a purpose. I watched the figure hurrying through the feeble glow of a lamp right to the door of number four-up. The dark cloak and door blended together and I squinted for a while before it became apparent that whoever it was had gone in.
     Now? Or should I wait...
     I started to open the door and froze. The show wasn't over. There were several — four of them, also cloaked in a fashion remarkably like the first figure. They weren't sneaking. Not exactly, but they were moving with purpose. And I had a feeling I knew what that was.
     And sure enough, they stopped at the door. Shadows merged. Then there was only the door.
     Shit.
     I could wait for a...
     No, I'd be sitting there all night. I pushed the door open and hopped out, setting the carriage rocking.
     "Sir?" the driver hissed.
     "I might be a while," I muttered. If there was a reply I didn't hear it. The elk shifted uneasily in their traces as I scrunched past them on the dirty ice and snow and headed for the side of the street. I pressed close to the walls, working the metal cuffs of my coat forward over my knuckles. Then opening my coat long enough to slip a pistol from the interior pocket. Another second to load all the cylinders, then carefully close it and clutch the wooden grip tight. There were doorways there, alleys, dark niches I could duck into if need be. Perhaps the street lights would be enough to mess with Rris night vision — the combination of those lights and the halos of frozen fog glowing around them certainly made it difficult to see the carriage when I glanced back.
     If there'd been anybody else around, that is. Fortunately, I reached number four without seeing a single hairy soul. The door was black-painted wood, battered and scratched and set in a sandstone archway. There was a small plaque. A bell-pull. And a very serious-looking latch.
     I held the pistol in a two-handed grip and hit the door with my shoulder.
     It was heavy. And if it'd been locked I'd have looked like a complete idiot. But it swung back with a grating feeling of grit in the grease on the hinges. Nobody hiding behind it. I closed it and slid a bolt so there'd be nobody coming up behind me.
     A tiny dark antechamber of dark stone, a high ceiling and almost baroque woodwork. Dead shrubs in planters. Then a hallway into bruise-black darkness. A small atrium surrounded by closed balconies and windows let bluish moonglow down to gleam on icy slush puddled on the flagstones. I moved along the wall, watching those dark gaps, the spots where players automatically gravitated to in FPSes from a world ago. A doorway off to one side with a staircase leading up. I could hear noises up there: voices raised, a yowling scream.
     Old wood squeaked as I took the stairs two careful steps at a time, treading close to the sides to minimize creaking. Sweat prickled my back. At the top there was a hallway. Shouting from an open door. Light fanning across a dusty carpet. Shadows moved violently and there was the sound of something smashing. A struggle.
     "Too far this time," someone was snarling. "Play us, a? You're going to..."
     The light was eclipsed a second before a Rris stepped out into the hall. I saw a dark cloak and the flash of a blade even as the Rris jerked and looked upwards at me, eyes going wide, mouth starting to yell.
     My knuckle duster hit the side of that muzzle in a full-on right cross. The Rris sprawled across the corridor, crashing into the wall and collapsing. A hooked blade the size of a machete clattered along the hall.
     "Jerth?" called a voice from the room. "Rot!"
     If I'd given myself time to think about it I'd never have moved; would never have gone through that door.
     A living room. A couple of lamps were burning. There was a potbellied stove. Furniture was overturned, broken, torn and scattered. There were Rris there: two of them on the floor, one of those kneeling on all fours. Three others stood over them, two with guns levelled at their victims.
     They looked around as I charged in. Their expressions melted to mirrors of the one out in the hall: shock and horror. The pistols swung off their targets, towards me.
     I fired first. Gunfire like spikes to the ears. Once, then again as the Rris screamed and twisted away even as the pistol hit the floor, went off with another concussion and gout of black powder smoke and the other one had a different kind of weapon, a swan-off longarm of some kind and my pistol clicked on another dud. That Rris fired. Missed. Worked a bolt and a brass cartridge clattered.
     This time my pistol fired.
     The last one had another knife and was already tearing across the room toward me. I rushed my shot. Missed. Didn't have time for another because the blade was blurring around and I swung my arm and felt the reverberation as the sharp steel hit the armor on my forearm. The Rris snarled and moved with the rebound, spinning and striking like a damn snake and I had the pistol around and fired again. Missed again, but it threw the Rris off in a swirling confusion of smoke and sparks and waving cloth. The knife swung again and I charged in, inside the sweep, grabbing the wiry arm and holding tight as I swung hard to try and send the Rris flying. A frantic twist and a clawed hand was darting at my face. I recoiled, the Rris breaking free then lunging and I swung up, hard, only clipping the chin as the Rris yanked backwards and hooked a clawed foot into the thick leather of my coat over my hip and kicked off, twisting in midair and landing a few paces away.
     The pistol in my hand clicked. Empty.
     And the Rris was already moving, fast, face a mask of snarling teeth and eyes. Rage and fear and desperation — all surface emotions; all I could read as the knife came in with murderous intent. I dropped the pistol and brought my arm around in a wild swing, metal rang on metal and I kept going, not giving time or space, bulling into the Rris and grabbing and lifting and throwing. A wooden frame splintered under the impact and the cloak swirled as the Rris scrambled out of the wreckage, crouching for another assault.
     I had the other pistol out. Aimed.
     The Rris froze. Panting and wide-eyed, gaze twitching from me to the gun while the knife wavered.
     "Don't move!" I snapped. I couldn't just pull the trigger. It'd be...
     There was a noise, out in the hall. I glanced away. Just for a split second and when I looked back the hand under the cloak was moving...
     I fired and the Rris' head jerked around like it'd been slapped and the body just... collapsed. There was a heavy clunk as the nasty little assassin's pistol hit the floor. I stood for a second, panting hard, then grimaced and kicked the pistol away as I went past.
     "Wait there," I growled to the pair of wide-eyed spectators. My mouth tasted of gunsmoke. My ears were still ringing from the percussion of indoor gunfire and my voice sounded like it was underwater.
     Out in the hall the one I'd slugged was struggling to stand again, staggering against the wall and fumbling with a musket in his belt. I hit him again as I came out the door. He went down and I kicked the body over to take the pistol and the knife beside it and throw them away. "No. Bad kitty!"
     There was a room door across the hall. No lock on that door, but beside it was a storage closet or something. It had a solid lock. I dragged the groggy assassin, dumped it and turned back and just about had a heart attack when another cloaked Rris burst in. "You..." the Rris who'd been with the coach driver started to say.
     I grabbed a fistful of cloak, yanked it in as I threw myself out the door, slammed it, and locked it.
     A pause, then hammering on the wood and I thought I heard a muffled voice yelling something I couldn't quite make out through the ringing in my ears. I slipped the iron key into a pocket: strange noises in these old houses.
     Back in the living room the male Rris was staring at the carnage, looking horrified. They both turned as I came in. The other one, the female, stood. Facing me. Wide open. Unthreatening. There was no fear there, but the ears were down. I knew those eyes. I knew those ears, that expression, that face.
     I heaved a deep breath, trying to get my panting under control again, "Hello, Mai."

The male was mechanically rummaging in a cabinet, finding mugs and a bottle of something. His ears were back, his fur still standing on end. The other... Mai... she was sitting on a cushion. She was wearing dark, coarse-woven clothes: that cloak, a heavy jerkin and leggings. Her feet were wrapped. She had a necklace, a small belt-pouch, and a bracelet on one wrist. I remembered what she'd looked like and I found my memory had twisted things, twisted her image to more... human? In the real world she looked solid and solemn and nothing like human.
     And I couldn't read her.
     "How did you find me," she asked quietly.
     "I didn't," I sighed. "I found your friend there," I gestured to the other Rris who was pouring a drink with shaking hands.
     "Really?"
     "The last time I saw him was in Three Birds Fall. Something... happened there and he... he wrote a play about it. I wanted to ask him some questions about some of the... ah... details in the play."
     "Huhn," she didn't seem entirely surprised.
     "So, I asked around. Found this place and arranged to... get some leave. I was going to ask him what he knew about you, but..." I let that trail off. "But enough about me; there are a few things I'd like to ask you such as what the FUCK?! Mai, or whatever your name is! What the hell is going on here?!"
     She sighed. "Shrieth, pour another couple of those, a?"
     The playwright had drained a glass and was pouring another.
     "Bought this place, a?" I asked. "Last I saw he was singing for his food."
     "That play is doing quite well," Mai said. "I hadn't expected it to be like that."
     "Then what was it supposed to be like?"
     "Trying to help you," she said.
     The wheels in my head just spun without gripping. Finally I said. "Okay. I give up. What is going on? Who are you? Really? You have a real name?"
     "I think I told you last time my name is not important. Maithris... it will suffice."
     "You can't tell me even that?"
     "Better if I don't."
     "For whom?" She hissed softly, an exhalation between small, sharp teeth. "Myself, you, Shrieth, people you know. There are... circumstances you're tangled in. Not through any fault of your own, but just by..." she seemed to hunt for some way to say it, then surrendered with tired swipe, "... just by being.
     "And as to what is going on," she said, "it's... complicated." There was a meaningful glance over at the playwright who was too busy shakily pouring to notice.
     "Guilds?"
     "You've been learning. Guilds. Guilds and the things behind them. And money. You. What you are, what you offer... it's been over the world. It's bounced around and sloshed and echoed and now it's starting to settle — people are starting to react. People in all sorts of places have heard all sorts of things and they are of different minds. There are contracts on you."
     "I thought the Mediator Guild kept track of things like that."
     "A. They do. Mostly. There are... areas they do not go, though. There are matters they do not deal with and, well, there are people who do deal in such matters."
     "Mercenaries," I said. I picked up the odd pistol one of the assailants had used. Crude thing, but it was an actual breech loader. A bolt action pistol. There were cartridges.
     "Of sorts."
     "Which is what you are." I tossed the gun down beside a body.
     "Of sorts. There are quite a few powerful people who see you as a threat. They would like that to be removed. There are others who see you as an... opportunity. They would like to see what sort of opportunity."
     That minstrel-come-playwright — Shrieth — handed her a glass of something expensivelooking, carefully avoiding me. Mai lapped and her tail lashed. "Rot. This night is not going as planned. Shrieth, I'm afraid we're going to have to take our leave."
     "What?" His ears went flat. "But... but what about this?" he flailed at the carnage scattered around the room.
     "I don't think they're going anywhere," Mai sighed. "But we should be. And there'll probably be guards turning up soon."
     "Mediators," I said.
     "You're sure?"
     "Well, I think I shut one of them in the closet out there, so, yes."
     She sighed again, with just a hint of a growl. "Then we'd best be off now. Shrieth, you should find some other guards or Mediators. Go to them rather than the other way around. Let them know, earn their keep."
     "A," he said. "Afterwards, how can I find you?"
     "I'll find you, a?"
     "Usual place?"
     "We'll see. Come on, Mikah."
     The thumpings from the closet had died down a bit, but the muffled swearing had heated up. As we headed down the stairs Mai nodded back toward the commotion.
     "Who is that in there? She's screaming your name. And other things."
     "That is a Mediator who is exactly where she should be."
     "She sounds... annoyed."
     "Perfectly normal for her. She's fine. She likes that sort of thing."
     In the wan light of the atrium I caught a flash of twin molten pennies as she glanced my way. "You're going to have to deal with that."
     "Recently, that's the least of my worries," I said.
     It was the second time that night I'd snuck out the back way. This time it was out into an alleyway. I'd half-expected to find a Mediator waiting, but it was dark and deserted, shadow and sharp moonlight. And the woman who was leading me...
     Mai looked around as I stopped. "We've been here before, a?" I said in the frigid gloom. "And what happens now? You run? You betray me again?"
     In the dark alley I think she looked shocked. At any rate there were a few seconds before she said. "Mikah, that was... No, that won't happen. I think you saved my life tonight."
     "That wasn't part of your plan? Is this?"
     "No."
     "Then where are we going?"
     "For now, just away from here. Is there somewhere you need to be?"
     "Land of Water embassy. You know it?"
     "A. I can take you. We can talk on the way. Is that hokai?"
     And while that wasn't what I'd wanted to hear, it was concise. I just nodded. That was enough for her.
     She led on. Immediately through another little door just across the way, then along a crooked alley that was all angles and mismatched steps and close enough that my shoulders brushed the sides. We emerged through another inconspicuous gate onto a street a block over. A larger street. Rudy glows of gaslamps marched away into the winter fog. There were shops along there, some with lights spilling out onto the snow. The forms of Rris stalked through the winter.
     I adjusted the collar of my coat and raised my hood, settling the brim down low for what concealment it offered. Then I fell into step beside Mai. My old friend. Lover. Betrayer.
     "How is your hand?" she asked. "Your finger. I heard about that."
     "It's done," I said. "It's healing."
     "More scars," she rumbled.
     "What the hell is going on here, Mai? This was supposed to be an uneventful trip. But we've been ambushed and shot at and blown up and poisoned. And on top of that, you've been busy. Left a trail all the way here."
     "You noticed."
     "Difficult to miss it. I don't think I was supposed to, a? The lord Hiesh sends his regards, by the way."
     "Oh? Huhn, that was a bit of misfortune."
     "Really? Someone who successfully deceives a kingdom, kidnaps one of the most guarded targets in that kingdom, eludes guard and the Guild, but is carelessly apprehended by a backwater lord. Am I the only one who finds that a little unlikely?"
     "Really?" she said airily. "I thought that went rather well."
     I looked at her. "What was the point of that? Why were you there? On our way you... you knew we'd becoming here, didn't you."
     "There were indications, a."
     Snow squeaked under my boots as we walked and chewed over what I knew, what I suspected. "You've been involved. In all this. The ones who attacked us knew things us; about me. There was that night in the Palace, someone was in my room. Then there were bodies. Do you know anything about that?"
     She was silent.
     "It was you, wasn't it."
     More silence. A Rris couple passing in the mist gave us odd looks.
     "Rot," I clenched my fists, frustrated. "Mai... whatever your name really is. Why? Why do all this? Who are you? Who are you working for?"
     Finally there was a hiss, visible in the frigid air. "It's... complicated."
     "As you've said. I would be very surprised if you could provide a simple explanation."
     "Mikah, I've been trying to protect you."
     I wasn't sure how to take that. "What?"
     "You want to know what's going on? Well, it's a war, Mikah."
     "War," I echoed dumbly.
     "A," she said. "Oh, not so much countries and armies and burning cities. Not so much political lines, but lines across money and interests and power. A slow war. Like I said: Guilds and companies and old money, old influence. They are slow to stir, but can grind mountains to powder. Those sorts are taking notice of you. Some of them see an opportunity. Others — they see a problem."
     I nodded. "I know the Guild is aware of that."
     She hissed: another cloud of breath. "The Guild has too many branches now. It gets lost in its own thickets. And there are always those who do their business in those very areas of uncertainty. They are quite capable of navigating those tangles. They can be expensive, but they are there.
     "Now, some of those concerned people have decided that the problem should be cut out, before the infection can spread. They have extensive resources. They can afford... specialists."
     "Mercenaries," I translated.
     "Of sorts. Specialists."
     "You are a specialist? A doctor?"
     "Of a sort. I am very good at... understanding people."
     "That is in demand?"
     "Oh, understanding what people will do in various circumstances; which way they will turn; where governments will look; what sort of treaties they might form. And not just normal people, it seems: I understood what you would try to do under Land of Water's care. It got me close to you. My employers recognized that."
     "A country?"
     "As I said: common concerns across borders. Powerful ones."
     "And which side of the border were you working for?"
     "Well, both sides."
     I stopped and stared at her back in the darkness. "Are you really that short of cash?"
     She turned, cocked her head. "It was necessary."
     "And dangerous when you get it wrong. Let me guess: those people tonight found out you were playing them?"
     "Interesting choice of words, but essentially yes. It was the best way to protect you."
     "They were the ones who attacked us? You call that protecting us? Mai, people died! Three Birds Fall, for christ's sake! They killed them all!"
     "A," she said flatly. "I know."
     "Then how was that possibly protecting us?"
     "Protecting you," she said levelly. "You, Mikah. You are the target and the prize. Rot, Mikah, you are important! You are valuable beyond what they can understand! Beyond what their coffers and scrips and investments can hold.
     "But all those things they value most highly. And they want to protect those interests. So, they found specialists. They were hired for a reason: they are a handful of knives with skills, but no morals. Or perhaps that was a skill in itself.
     "Other parties knew these ones were being employed, but not exactly where or how or by whom. So, I got myself found — they wanted an 'expert' on you. Being arrested was a good way to stand out. They noticed. Grabbed me. The one with the money gathering these individuals was a highborn fool. He was a gullible cutout, but he was also determined that he was in command. I couldn't tell him outright what to do, but I could... suggest things."
     "And you suggested that?"
     "No. Not that. Something different," she said in the same dull tones. "But he decided that way would be... easier. There were limits to how much I could protest. As it stands I think that aroused suspicions."
     "This leader, wore a cloak? Like that one?"
     "He favored gray."
     "Or red, actually."
     "What do... Huhn. You've seen him."
     "From a distance. Red stands out to my eyes. And suggest what sort of things?"
     "Huhn. He wanted information, on how to best get at you."
     "And you told him what?"
     "What he wanted to hear, usually. Supporting his oversized self-worth and overwrought schemes. They seemed clever, but they were too complicated to be practical. That was useful: we could rely on them to fall apart under their own weight and he was too self-absorbed to realize. But some of the others..."
     "We noticed," I said dryly. "I knew I'd seen some of those in cartoons." Then I had to shake my head, "Was there a good reason you didn't go to the Guild? To someone?"
     "Because I was told not to," she said. "Mikah, it's a war, but I'm not sure who's fighting it. I report to my employer, a cutout herself who hired me to [infiltrate] employees of a competitor. They have their own agents, their own blades and banks, and their own ways of doing things. And they are adept at operating under or around the Guild's notice."
     "So much for the Guild being all-powerful," I mused.
     A low chitter: "There is obvious power, and there is the subtle variety. I know which sort worries me most. And these ones do concern me. And I'm quite sure they don't place all their bets on one solutions: they have other plans underway."
     "More trouble?"
     "Old trouble, I think. There's been some unrest in Bluebetter recently."
     "I have heard."
     "The movements have been... disjointed, but it means there are potentially small and desperate groups out there who can be... redirected, misled, or simply bought out. I think some of our adversaries have been providing assistance to them: finance, supplies, information. At arms' length, of course, but it means they could be concealed threats to you."
     "Another one?" I sighed. "You're sure about that?"
     "I have no details, only what my employer has deigned to enlighten me with. I was told of rumors and requests for counter-offers. Just be aware that these groups are there and they've been a thorn in the foot of the government for some time. Some are amateurs, others... less so."
     And they'd been there for a while. "They are... what do they want?"
     "Change," she said simply. "Less guild control in daily life, less Mediator oversight, more accessibility to guild-held jobs, better pay, all the usual."
     Anarchists? Reactionaries? Sounded familiar, but that sort of a label was dangerous.
     "How does your employer feel about that?"
     "She's using them too, of course."
     "Oh, of course," I said. "And about her — older lady? Highborn? Trade interests. Enjoys salacious gossip? You told her a lot about... us."
     "You may have met her."
     "Not me," I said darkly. "Toadstools. Really?"
     I think she looked surprised, then almost embarrassed.
     "And was there a reason for telling that playwright so much?"
     "Getting in before they do."
     "You've lost me again."
     "Mikah, the news about what happened at Three Birds Falls arrived here almost before you did. Anything of interest jumps from town to town like bushfire. And they shape peoples' thoughts and opinions. Now, understand, I don't think any story could spin you as a hero, but we might be able to save you from being a monster."
     "Oh," I considered that and then laughed. Propaganda. They wanted to get in first before someone else started making me out to be... what she said.
     "It's amusing?"
     "It's not the first time. There was a playhouse in Open Fields."
     She blinked at me. "It sounds like there's a story behind that."
     "And Mediators," I said. "They're touchy about that so I wouldn't mention it to them."
     "Ah. And how are they going to feel about you locking one of their number in a closet?"
     "Really? All I recall is seeing a stranger rushing toward me under suspicious circumstances."
     "Really." She sounded dubious.
     "Oh, she'll be out of there in no time. The front door was locked and she got through that fast enough. Besides, she's not going to be lonely: she's got someone she can talk at."
     "You mean talk to."
     "You don't know her."
     She snorted. "I think you may be over-estimating the Guild's sense of humor. I imagine they will have some hard questions."
     "Don't get too upset over them. Remember what those thugs were about to do to you."
     "I was more concerned about what they'll ask you," she huffed. "And you don't seem surprised she's there."
     "I was expecting something," I said. "I had to arrange some help to get out. I knew someone would tell them. I just made sure no-one else knew all the details. Made them curious enough that they let me go and just followed."
     We walked on for a bit. My boots scrunched through snow. Her broad shaggy feet were silent.
     "You're more cynical, I think," she said after a while.
     "You think?"
     "I think that the monster I knew was lost and alone and deathly afraid. It needed me. Now, you are armed." She reached out, patted the gouged leather of my coat's arm. "And armored. Still afraid, a?"
     "I've found that caution pays."
     "I'm not criticizing. Saved my hide tonight." She looked at me again: a tufted ear flicked as a snowflake drifted into it. "You weren't expecting all that, were you?"
     "No. I wanted to ask him some questions, get some answers, but I... I wasn't sure what I was expecting. Not that. Not you."
     "Huhn, I think that night in the Palace was a step too far. They got suspicious."
     "Something I was wondering: how did you get into the Palace anyway?"
     "Huhn," she grunted again. "They had an agent inside. They let down a rope from the balcony. Luckily I got to you first. I have to say your teacher is a light sleeper."
     "Snores. But so do you."
     "Sah!" she hissed and flashed teeth at me. "How is she? After what happened, I mean."
     "She's still trying to forget. Mai, I can... manage. I can get by. But Chihirae... that's never going to leave her."
     "Huhn. I heard she did look impressive in the palace ballroom."
     "Your patron again, a?"
     "News like that does travel. And now you've presented her like a prize jewel, what are you going to do with her?"
     Avoiding. Deflecting questions. Was she also lying outright? "'Do with her'? She's not my property."
     "You know what I mean."
     I sighed. "Yeah, and I'm... not sure."
     "But you value her?"
     "That's not the word I would use," I said.
     "Your... need, then."
     "Again, that's..." I sighed and shook my head. "It's complicated. I do... value her, but... They were going after her again, weren't they. At the inn, the Palace. It wasn't me they were after."
     "A."
     I looked at her, at my old friend and lover and betrayer walking beside me in the feeble moonlight. Icy frost settled on her shoulders, on her fur. Her profile was feline, inscrutable, inhuman.
     "I can't protect her, can I." It was a knowledge that lay like a lump of lead inside me.
     "They just have to get lucky once," she said quietly. "And they will keep trying. Others will. She's your keystone, you know. I know that. People know that."
     "Oh, Christ."
     "I know it's something you don't want to hear, but... you already know it, don't you."
     I only nodded, dumbly. It was something she understood.
     "Then I can only wish you luck in life and choices."
     "No suggestions?"
     "Mikah, for a normal person it wouldn't be an issue. But I don't think you can be a normal person, even if you tried. You just don't seem to work that way."
     That would be a no.
     I heard a sigh, then she continued:
     "Sometimes you do something that appears normal, just enough so people forget. But there's always something else under the surface: a different purpose, motivation, intent."
     "It's that bad?" I almost winced at how plaintive that sounded.
     "Oh, rot... you know obsession is an insanity, a? You remember the Living Hall?"
     "It's not like that!" I protested.
     "But it looks like that, Mikah," she said quietly, "and that's what counts. Even when you've tried to describe it, that's what it sounds like. It's the closest description anyone can grasp."
     I shuddered, hunched down into my coat. "And that's what you think? What she thinks?"
     "I can't say what she thinks. But she's stayed, hasn't she. I find that remarkable." There were multiple meanings to that term, in both tongues. I ran them back and forth in my mind, trying to find some permutation that I could interpret favorably.
     "I think," Mai said quietly. "I think it'll be either you or her."
     That was something I really didn't want to hear. A pair of bison loomed out of the mist, like hoary icebergs. We stepped aside, watching as they lumbered past with a heavy goods wagon in tow and steam curling off their hides. We rounded a corner, through an arch too narrow for traffic. There was a small night market in the lane beyond: a couple of dozen stalls and stands draped with colored cloths, pattered with building snow. Despite the hour and the cold Rris bustled. There was shouting, laughter, music. There was a rickety stage with a troupe wielding melodrama and wooden swords. Lamps were soft spheres of light in the mist and braziers glowed red, sputtering, spilling dirty smoke and smells of roasting and cooking. That reminded me of how hungry I was.
     "Seriously?" the Rris formerly known as Mai asked.
     "It's been a busy night," I said.
     "That it has." She sighed and altered course.
     Rris vendors goggled as we passed, heads turning to follow us. Grills and stews, kebabs, suspicious cuts and sausages, fish and fowl, early breads and steaming pies... laid out in stalls and carts and storefronts. The scents of cooking food were almost palpable.
     "You might appreciate this," Mai suggested of one aromatic hole-in-the-wall place. Bread was being basted with dripping and gravy, shredded meats laid on, dusted with paprika and salt and then pressed under a hot iron plate. "Good for a cold night."
     There was a wooden bench for the customers at the counter. Behind the counter were an older female and a skinny cub with hands like fuzzy oven gloves and head fur like an exploded dandelion. Of course they stared.
     "Two, please," I said. The amber eyes were fixed on me, then as one both pairs twitched to the silver finger I tapped on the counter. Considerably more than they'd see in a few months. "That is enough? Keep the change."
     That was enough to jolt them. "Yes. Yes... ah, yes," the older one flustered and hurried the adolescent to work with a whack upside of the head. Basting and slicing and sprinkling.
     "Huhn, sir?" the lady behind the counter ventured. "Forgive me, but... are you... I mean, are you..."
     "Yes. Yes, I am quite hungry," I said.
     Mai snorted. "Mikah, I don't think that was what she intended."
     "No?"
     "That play!" The vendor's ears were back as she blurted that out. "That play, sir. The one from the play, that's you?"
     "Which one? There've been a few. The beast one?"
     "A," she squeaked.
     "Oh, that. Yes, but I'm off-duty," I assured her as I watched the other Rris lift the iron griddle with a hissing cloud of aromatic steam. "Those are done? Great. Ow, hot. Ah, and if some serious-looking people come around here asking after me, could you please tell them I went that way? Thank you."
     The food was hot and messy and they didn't have handy disposables such as towels or paper plates. I juggled hot, greasy handfuls as I turned and gave one to Mai. She took it and it was then I realized that most of the street had gone quiet as vendors and customers alike stared at us.
     "Still blending in, I see," Mai muttered as we walked on, punctuating the remark with a bite from her steaming meal. "Ah! Hot!"
     "I'm almost a local," I said, waving my own sandwich before biting in. "Ow."
     "Warned you. To your taste?"
     "Hmmmff."
     It was... good. Really good. Crackling dripping and steaming gravy soaking into the grilled bread and meat. Intense flavor and filling and I was damned hungry. We ate as we walked through the fog, through the night crowd, through the will-o-the wisp glows of lamps in the mist. We ignored the stares and the feral children scurrying along behind us and just walked quietly until we left that street, turned into a tiny alley, through a gate she had a key for, into a quieter lane, then another parkway: a long road with winter-bare trees in the night mist. There were fewer lights there, fewer people, and — if my bearings were right — the embassy wasn't far off.
     "This is all going to cause problems," Mai finally said.
     "I am almost beyond caring."
     "Fine for you. I'm going to have to hurry along a few arrangements."
     "You're leaving town again?"
     "I don't think I can stay," she said. "Mikah, you know I can't stay."
     I winced. "I know that, I just..." I wish someone could I wanted to say, but that sounded to whiney. I finished the last mouthful of my sandwich instead.
     A pause. Mai's tail lashed. "I really did enjoy the time together. It was interesting. It was fun. I would have liked to have had longer. But that's not going to come back."
     "Perhaps I could get the Guild to... forget it."
     A low laugh. "You would have to have some extremely good blackmail material."
     I considered, perhaps a bit too long. She caught the pause.
     "Mikah! You don't... Don't even think about trying something like that!"
     "I know," I said. "They made that quite clear."
     In the darkness the expression on her face was... horror, disbelief, incredulity? I don't know. But she stared at me like that for several long seconds before hissing and shaking her head. "That would have something to do with the incident in Open Fields? No! You know what?" she growled, "Don't tell me. There's enough to juggle. Just tonight will set fuses burning."
     "Your employer will be annoyed?"
     "You did disrupt some carefully set plans."
     "And saved your life."
     "There is that," she acknowledged that with a casual wave. "Which I'm sure they'll take comfort in. And I'm also sure there will be some... rearrangement of pieces."
     "Where to?"
     A low laugh. "As if I'd know; I just work here, a?"
     "I know," I sighed. "Mai, you know the Guild doesn't have much of a sense of humor?"
     "I had noticed."
     "They do tend to feel that if you aren't with them then you're a problem."
     "Huhn," she finished the final bite of her meal. Licked her fingers and looked off down the road. "What have you been doing, Mikah? Besides all the fragments I've heard about you, are you well? Are you actually living? You haven't made any more of those self-death attempts?"
     That was the way the term translated.
     "I think you already know that," I said. "I think you probably know quite a lot about how I'm doing. You're their expert on me, a?"
     At that her ears flicked and she snorted. "I wouldn't go that far. I've been kept informed. I heard about what happened up north, your finger there — but there's a disconnect between written reports and the real thing. I know they've given you room; you have your teacher; you have a nice house and a staff..."
     "Who leak information like a sieve, a?"
     "Huh. Keeps the onlookers more manageable if they think they know what you are doing. I do hear about a lot of things, but it's always... through their interpretations. They see you as settled; they believe you are content with the current arrangements. But I know you see things differently. Are you... surviving?"
     "You were writing a book about me, weren't you? How's that going? What was it called? Looking at a Mind?"
     "Perceptions of Mind."
     "So you're an expert. You should know."
     "Mikah..."
     "Alright," I took a freezing breath. "Mai, I'm surviving. After... after everything that's happened, I'm surviving. I have a freedom, of sorts, but I also have people all around me to whom... to many of whom I'm not a person. I have people who are friendly and close to me, but it still feels like I'm looking in from the outside. I have money and property and a somewhat prominent position, but it's all so... It feels not real."
     "They listen to you?"
     "They listen, but I think they don't understand what I'm saying."
     A few more steps in silence.
     "Mikah, if someone were to offer you a place. Away from here. A place where you would be a valued guest and sheltered from things like this. What would you say to that?"
     I grimaced. "Oh, fuck... Mai, is this a sales pitch? You know the Guild would never..."
     "No! No, it's not like that. Mikah, it's... The Guild might not be an issue."
     I swallowed. Hard. "You're not thinking about doing something with the Guild Charter? They do know about that sort of game. I've heard what happened to the last lot to try that."
     A hesitation. "I don't know. I'm really not privy to that kind of information, but there are people who think that the way the Guild is dealing with you is not right."
     "Yeah, I'm one of them," I said. "But they don't play nicely. And they're already upset about you and your... employers. If you put your head out they'll happily bite it off."
     A hiss like steam escaping. "I'd have thought you'd be the last one to care about my wellbeing."
     I caught her arm, drawing her up. Felt the coarse weave of the dark cloak and the fur under that and the violent flinch in the muscle under that. She looked down at my hand, then up at my face and her eyes were dark glimmers. Unreadable.
     "I forgave you a long time ago," I said gently.
     "Mikah..."
     "And I think you saved my life that other night in the Palace. Our lives. I don't know why you did it, but I think it caused you more problems. Those others found out, didn't they."
     She didn't say anything.
     "Or suspected you. Used you for something. Followed you tonight."
     "And then you saved my hide," she finally said.
     "Didn't mean to."
     "If they suspected me before, now they'll be sure."
     "Perhaps I could've just given them a stern warning?"
     She twisted, caught my hand in hers, raised it to gently nip my finger. There was something around her wrist: tarnished and scratched and almost unexpected. "I have thought about you," she said. "Sometimes when I'm talking with people I find myself wondering what you would do, what you would say. Something outlandish, to be sure."
     "Careful," I said. "That's crazy talk."
     A low hiss and another nip, then she leaned in, butting her head against my chest. "I think I missed you."
     In that fog and shadow and moonlight I hugged her, scratched at the fur on the back of her neck, behind her ears. She sighed. "You always were good at that," she said after a while.
     "Not too late to come back," I said.
     "The Guild would most certainly have something to say about that."
     "We don't have to tell them. They might not notice."
     "A pleasant dream," she laughed and drew away from me. "For now, I think we need to go our own ways. Your residence is that way. Turn right, then ahead. I won't risk getting any closer. Good luck."
     "You too. And Mai?" I said to the retreating figure.
     "A?" she turned.
     "We'll meet again?"
     "Who knows? I was wrong last time. Guild affairs in the north might take an interesting turn. Huhn, and Mikah, watch out for the cold, a?"
     "And you take care," I said. She was already stalking away, shrugging her cloak up a bit higher as the tiger-stripes of feeble night glow and tree-shadows scribbled across her. I watched her fade until I realized I was staring after a figment of shifting night-light. She was already gone.
     Eventually, I turned and went my own way.
     What was that? Did that really just happen? I'd found what I'd been looking for and now... I was shaking. She was there, then gone again. I'd let her go. Had she played me? She'd lied to me, I knew that. But had she just twisted me around her finger again and strolled away? Was there something I'd missed? No, she could've ditched me at any time; or got me killed or taken again. She could've done that, but she hadn't. Instead she'd led me here. And over there was the place where the coach had been waiting and over there was the wall at the back of the embassy and the culvert.
     There were lights on in the house, but I couldn't see any frantic activity. No guards running around, nobody searching the streets.
     The culvert was as dark and as cold as it'd been when I'd left. I half expected a Mediator to materialize out of the gloom, but it was as silent as a tomb. The door was still unlocked. I locked it behind me. Guards made their rounds — I saw a pair saunter along their route and vanish around a corner and there was no indication that anything was out of the ordinary.
     I got back in the same way I'd left — the balcony. Ornate brickwork seems to be another blind spot in Rris security; they can't climb it that well, so they assume no-one else can. I can. The balcony was on the second floor, so it wasn't that high, and the bricks, while icy cold, were ornate and stood proud, providing a good handhold. I hauled myself over the balustrade, dislodging snow. The little loop of string around the interior latch of the French doors was still there so I could open it from the outside.
     Inside was cold and dark and still. The fire was guttering — nothing more than ash and a dull glow. I knocked the snow and ice off my boots. Splinters of light made it in through the windows, just enough for me to find my flashlight and turn it on low. I checked the door. It was still locked, but the single hair I'd tacked into place on the frame was dislodged.
     I had the pistol out as I turned.
     "I wondered if you'd done something like that," a voice said. Shadows in the corner shifted and I flicked the flashlight to high. Rohinia squinted in the sudden spotlight. "Please, that is unpleasant."
     I hesitated before flicking the beam back to low. "Waiting around in my room. People will get the wrong idea."
     He snorted. "Since you're back and Jenes'ahn isn't, I'm assuming her plan didn't work out as expected?"
     "What? Plan? What about her?"
     "You don't know where she is?"
     "Last I saw her was at dinner."
     He stared, then said, "She was driving the carriage you thought to sneak off in."
     "You mean... oh. That was her?"
     "It was."
     "Uh-oh."
     He went motionless. "What did you do."
     "In my defense, you know I have trouble telling people apart. If she..."
     "What did you do?" he growled again.
     "I think I locked her in a closet."
     He stared for a few seconds, as though processing what I'd just said. Then he said, "Oh. She won't like that."
     "She's damn lucky I didn't shoot her. Jumping out at me like that," I said. I set the torch into lamp mode and put it down on a table, the pistol beside it. I unbuckled the coat.
     "Mikah, what happened?"
     "You think something happened?" I asked as I shrugged out of the armored coat. The heavy leather was cut, slashed through to the underlying metal and ceramic in places. The smears on the pale leather probably wasn't ketchup.
     "Mikah!"
     "All right." I hung the coat up. "I went to ask some questions, get some answers. Some other people also had some questions. Things got... exciting."
     "Did you get your answers?"
     "Some. And some more questions."
     "Always seems to be the way," he said philosophically. "And where were you going?"
     "You didn't know?" I asked, pointlessly raising an eyebrow. Of course they didn't know. And of course someone had ratted me out. I'd pretty much expected that. If I'd ever let slip of where I was going when I laid plans for that little excursion then they'd have never let me past the window. But keeping that one nugget secret had meant the Guild had to have the clever idea of letting me sneak out and following me to see where I went and who I talked to. That had given me gave me some wriggle room and some backup, even if they didn't know it at the time.
     "Well, if you must pry, I went to pay a visit to the writer of that play."
     "You disliked it that much?" Rohinia was leaning against the embossed wallpaper, watching me, casually but carefully. They could read Rris like books. They weren't nearly so good with me, but I wasn't sure how quickly they learned.
     "He knew some things he shouldn't have. " I took a poker and stirred the ashes in the grate — there were embers in there. "I wanted to find out how."
     "And did you?"
     "He'd been talking with Mai." I tossed a couple of sticks in, poked some more in the hope something might happen. "He still was. She was there."
     "The doctor? Huhn, you know we have an interest in her also."
     I looked around. He hadn't moved, but there was an intrigued tilt to the head. "I'm sure you do," I said. "She declined to stop by."
     "And what of the others? The ones who attacked you?"
     "Three dead. One still alive in the closet with your partner. I wish them all the best together."
     "All that and you let the doctor get away?"
     "Oh, she's much better than I am. I couldn't stop her."
     His expression didn't change an iota. "Quite. A wonder you lived."
     "Quite."
     "Speaking of which," he said and an ear twitched. "I think my associate is back."
     It was a few more seconds before I heard a door slam and a distant yowl that sounded like, "where is he!"
     "Does she sound happy?" I asked, ever hopeful.
     Rohinia didn't reply to that. And shortly after the bedroom door slammed open and there was a bristling, ragged, cloaked figure standing there, fur on end, heaving furious breaths. Her eyes locked on me. Her jaws were spasming, twitching, biting air. Muzzle distorted into a landscape of twisted fur and bared teeth.
     "You!" she coughed as she stalked toward me, a clawed hand grasping for the knife at her belt. "You... you... you..."
     Rohinia stepped forward, between us. "Constable," he warned.
     "You... you..." she stuttered to a halt but never took her eyes off me. "You... you..."
     "I am dealing with this, constable," Rohinia rumbled.
     Her wild eyes flicked, to him, back to me. Then she snarled an inarticulate noise like someone chainsawing an engine block, turned and was gone.
     I looked at Rohinia. "Was it something I said?"

"Thank you for your hospitality, sir," I said to the Ambassador. "And I apologize for any trouble I may have caused you."
     The Ambassador didn't even glance at the Mediator standing behind me in the entry vestibule. "It's quite all right," he said, straight faced. "No-one was certain how those sauces were mixed up. Fortunate no-one was hurt."
     The sauces... I was able to keep my own face straight. "These things do happen."
     "Thank you for your understanding. It was an interesting night."
     "That it was," Chaeitch murmured under his breath.
     In the predawn light the carriages were waiting on the drive. Staff had loaded our baggage. I climbed into the first one with Chaeitch and Rraerch and settled back into the plush seats with a sigh. The others settled themselves and looked at each other.
     "Mikah," Chaeitch ventured, "exactly what happened last night?"
     "I met someone," I said.
     "Who?"
     "Mai."
     "You mean... Oh. Rot."
     And the door was yanked open again. "You two. Out."
     Chaeitch and Rraerch took one look and bailed out. I started to move.
     "Not you," Jenes'ahn growled at me. I sat back and the cab rocked as she planted shaggy paws and stepped up and in. The door slammed. She dropped into the seat opposite, encompassed by the heavy folds of her roadcoat and well-worn uniform.
     Amber eyes glared. Expressionless. Her breath steamed. One ragged ear twitched spasmodically and her tail-tip slapped against her ankle.
     I wondered if I'd be able to call it self-defense.
     The carriages lurched into motion.
     "That," she finally proclaimed, each word bitten and spat out, "was no accident."
     "That," I replied, "was you being lucky my gun was empty."
     "You expect me to believe you didn't know it was me?"
     "How the Hell would I know it was you? I see a strange Rris running at me, what am I supposed to think?"
     "You don't expect me to..."
     "You know I have trouble telling Rris apart normally. A dark hallway. And you disguised yourself. You know what happened the last time someone did that! And that was supposed to be someone I knew!"
     She glared. But a part of Mediator training is that they are supposed to think, to consider. And what I'd just said was something to consider because it was quite true, however hopeless it made me sound.
     "I don't believe that even you would be so gullible."
     "Not so gullible that I'd let myself get jumped by a stranger after a fight."
     "And deaf. You didn't hear me shouting?"
     "A lot of people know my name," I said. "I don't listen to the mumblings of strangers shut in closets."
     There wasn't a flicker on her face, but her anger was an incandescent thing seething just beneath the surface. I actually didn't want to find out just how far I could push her.
     "Okay," I sighed. "Perhaps I should apologize for that."
     She didn't flinch. "You should. And you should explain what you and that doctor discussed."
     I frowned, leaned back into the creaking leather upholstery. "She saved me, betrayed me, rescued me, left me. What do you think we talked about?"
     "You don't owe her. She doesn't owe you," she growled, flatly. "There is nothing she's obliged to tell you, so why should she. You threatened her? You told her something? Why would anything she tell you bear any resemblance to the truth?!"
     She was flailing, trying to make my actions fit her logical framework. What a Rris might do. It was almost painful to watch.
     "She offered explanations," I said.
     "And you accepted them."
     "You know there are other players."
     She was quiet. Glaring. Then: "She told you who."
     "She said she's not against the Guild."
     "Then why does she hide from us?"
     "Because her people do not think they can work well with the Guild. I think I can understand their view — you do not play well with others."
     She grinned, and there was no humor at all in that rictus. "What did she tell you!"
     "Nothing you can use. She was trying to infiltrate those red riders — the ones who attacked us. She had succeeded. And then she blew her cover when she saved my life that night."
     "Blew her..."
     "Gave herself away," I explained. "So they were watching her; possibly fed her false information, followed her. They intended to ask hard questions of her tonight. I interrupted."
     "And you intend to use this obligation?"
     I stared at the Mediator across a gulf of species. The words translated, but not the intention. "I don't understand what that means."
     Now she blinked. "You [involved/interfered] in a way you didn't have to."
     "I did have to. I wouldn't let her... Anyway, she saved my life, back in the Palace. She was one of the ones who broke in. She killed the other two."
     "She told you that."
     "A."
     "And how they got in. And out."
     "She... didn't say."
     "And you didn't ask?" Her nostrils flared, wrinkling her muzzle. "No, that's not it. You did, didn't you. But she didn't say... or she did say, but what she said wasn't the answer. She lied to you. And you knew that."
     I shrugged, looked out the window — the frosted glass stopped me seeing anything. She'd simmered down, or gone off a full boil. She'd stopped twitching, but the fact she could read me like that was disturbing. "Little from column b."
     A derisive snort. "So you knew she lied to you. And you say you still trust her! Are you a simpleton?!"
     "I think she has her reasons."
     The teeth were bared again. "And you defend her again! Rot you! Her actions are criminal! Your's are just insane! Why did you go there? Why didn't you ask us? What were you intending?"
     "To start with, I was intending to ask him questions. I wasn't expecting her there. Not like that "
     "Questions. About?"
     I took a breath. "About things in that play. Things he knew that... that..."
     "That only the doctor knew," Jenes'ahn growled.
     "A."
     She considered. "And you didn't want the Guild present because you are still protecting her."
     I didn't answer that.
     "And you never considered it might be bait."
     "Oh, yes."
     "But you went anyway."
     "Oh, yes."
     The Mediator glared at me. Morning sunlight momentarily flashed across her as the carriage turned. Her jaw moved, as though she were biting down on something. Then she said, "And what sort of answers did you get to your questions?"
     "Constable," I sighed. "I didn't go there for your kinds of questions — I went there for my own answers. She... gave me some of those. I think.
     "As for your questions: she said works for someone. She didn't say who. They think I might be useful. They are in... disagreement with others who think I might upset the cart and are more interested in holding on to what they have. And no, she didn't say who they are either, but I suspect if you find someone with a bit of money the odds are pretty even that they will be involved. One way or another."
     She chewed on that, stonefaced. And eventually she growled, "And that is all you learned. No names, plans, locations?"
     "Umm, the night markets have some really tasty food. There's this dish called a..."
     "Enough!" she snarled and took a deep breath. "You've told anyone else about this? Not the food, you fool!"
     "I haven't exactly had much of a chance. Besides, you must've known this. And what did you get out of your closet companion back there?"
     Her ears twitched back. "Investigations are ongoing. You will keep this information to yourself, you understand. For your own sake."
     "You don't think that our opponents might have already noticed something has happened?"
     "They doubtless have. And it might goad them into trying something."
     "And is that supposed to be good?"
     Ears twitched again. "It could be an opportunity for us."
     I considered that. "'An opportunity'. As in, they try to kill me and you try to catch them?"
     "A," she smiled. Rather, she bared teeth, and it wasn't entirely pleasant. "It could work out very well for all involved."
     "And if they succeed?"
     The grin didn't fade. "I can't actually think of a downside."

Conversation lapsed for the rest of the trip back to palace. Jenes'ahn watched me like a cat watches a mousehole. I sat, stared blankly at the window.
     Lost in my own thoughts, wondering what I could've done differently the last night. I couldn't bring her back; I couldn't go with her. Arranged for another meeting? How could I do that when I'd be watched like a hawk for the foreseeable future. And why'd she lied to me? How often had she lied to me? Was that a message in itself? Were the people she was working for going to be a threat? How would the Guild deal with them?
     As for who'd ratted me out to the Guild... I'm sure his Lordship had his reasons. Probably reconsidered the repercussions and didn't like the results. And I'd never explicitly said he shouldn't mention the loan of the carriage to anyone. Did that mean I didn't have to go ahead with my end of the deal?
     And more importantly than that where was the ongoing threat to consider. According to Mai, she'd been trying to help us by fiddling with the opposition's plans. The Guild might have been dubious, but I could see that without her dabbling in their over-convoluted plans they might have been more effective. That gnawed at me, especially when I recalled how close they'd come.
     Now she was busted. And a target of not only the Guild and various kingdoms, but now her ex-associates.
     And who were they? This shadowy... cabal? Quite possibly I'd already met them — influential Rris who'd decided they liked the status quo and didn't want the gravy train derailed. And they were determined enough that they would go against the Guild.
     But from what I'd seen, there weren't many who were willing to gainsay the Guild. So perhaps that would reduce the number of potential participants a little.
     Perhaps.
     No guarantees.
     The palace was still there — an artificial reef of marble and alien aesthetics dropped into a white wilderness under a turquoise sky. My quarters were still there — an oasis of warmth after the ride and hike through frigid hallways. I closed the door on guards and escorts and sighed in the sudden warm silence.
     The atrium was empty. As was the hall. And the parlor and living room. The door to the adjoining quarters was closed. A pair of staffers emerged from the bedroom and offered respectful bows before vanishing hurriedly below stairs. They'd unpacked my luggage, hung the clothes and laid clean ones out. I stood there in that pale opulence. Morning sunlight streamed in, glaring on marble. The figure looking back at me from the big, expensive mirror was horribly out of place.
     "Mikah?" I heard from the hall behind me. Chihirae was padding in, looking anxious. "What's happened? There's... the Mediators won't say... oh, rot," she trailed off, her expression twisting. "A fight?"
     "It's not that bad..." I started.
     "Mikah," she came close, nostrils flaring. Then she slapped at my chest, a shove with her palm. "You reek! Gunpowder and blood and that fear-stink. What have you been doing! Where have you..."
     "Mai," I said and she stopped. "I saw Mai."
     "The doctor." She sounded dubious. "What? How?"
     "A. I, uh, sort of snuck out and saw her."
     "And why? Plague, Mikah! She abducted you. She was responsible for... for..." her ears went flat and I knew what she was remembering.
     "I know." I shrugged uncomfortably. "I know. She had some answers."
     "Hahh! Mikah, don't get involved in that." She laid hands on my chest again, looking up at my face. "Please, leave that past alone. It's done! It's gone! She is... not a friend."
     She was scared, even I could see that. "I don't think she's an enemy."
     That didn't cut with her. "After what she did? Mikah, sometimes I think you... You're not that much a fool, I know that."
     It wasn't jealousy. It couldn't be.
     "You were fighting? Not her? She didn't try that again?"
     "No," I sighed. "Those ones that attacked us again. They were after her."
     "And you fought them?"
     "Harsh language didn't work. But the Guild got one. Maybe they can also get some answers."
     "Rot," she hissed and scrubbed at her muzzle. "They are your guard. If you run from them they can't protect you."
     I shrugged out of my coat, hanging it on its stand. The heavy leather had more gouges and slashes, claw marks, knife marks, spatters of blood. Metal glinted through. "These assailants. They aren't going to go away. And these guards are blocking their attacks, but they only have to get lucky once. I had a chance to maybe get to the source. I took it."
     "The source."
     "A."
     "That's what you're calling her. Mikah, she's dangerous."
     "She knows more about the other side than we do. Than the Guild does."
     "Then why didn't you let the Guild take her? Why didn't you tell them?"
     I took too long answering that.
     "Because you wouldn't do that to her, would you," she finished for me. And her tone was low — careful, wary, probing. "After everything she did to you, you would... if she asked you to go with her, would you?"
     "No."
     "How can you be so sure."
     "Because she did," I said. "I said no."
     Chihirae just stared at me. Uncomprehending. At least she didn't flinch when I stepped in, embraced her, hugged her, buried my face into fur that smelled like summer dust. She endured that, until she finally muffled:
     "You really need to wash."
     "Sorry." I let her go and she stepped back, brushing fur down with her hands.
     "Join me?" I ventured.
     Another quizzical look. "Maybe later. I think his lordship will want to see you first."
     "Not really my type," I said.
     She cocked her head, then chittered. And when that wound down she sighed: "It's like asking the sky to change. It looks back down at you and it changes to cloudy or sunny or raining or snow, but it's still always the sky. Now, go have your rain."
     She turned and stalked away, her tail twitching back and forth on itself. "And stop staring at my tail," she called back over her shoulder.
     "It's a very nice tail," I offered and she just snorted and was gone with a swish of said appendage.

There was upset and recriminations. The Guild was unhappy, the Land of Water people were unhappy, and our hosts weren't exactly ecstatic.
     I'd had a chance I'd hadn't expected. But. It'd been such a fleeting thing: a few moments, words, and then another parting. As if I could've gone with her — every Rris nation would've been hunting high and low for me, including the Guild. It would've been back into a very small box for me. Was there any way I could track her down again? Did I want to? If the Guild used me to get to her...
     "Mikah?"
     I blinked back to Chaeitch and Rraerch staring at me. The King of Bluebetter had just asked me something.
     "What?"
     "Mikah," Rraerch said quietly, sternly, "His highness just asked if you had any particular concerns regarding tomorrows schedule."
     "Oh," I blinked in the sunlight streaming into the king's private study, one of those multitudes of rooms that the Rris royalty seemed to pick for an occasion like you might pick out a set of clothes. Five of us gathered around a low table in a somewhat scandalously informal manner: myself, Chaeitch, Rraerch, the Bluebetter king and his aide, Hedia, and — of course — Rohinia as the Mediator's oversight.
     At a glance the furnishings seemed terribly understated for a palace. Many looked old, worn, faded and patched. But, you took a closer look and noticed that the table was old, old, old wood, polished and oiled so many times that the carved inlays had worn down to tactile impressions; the cushions were coarse woven linen bleached with age and closed with hammered silver tabs. All around us were similar trappings: rugs, brass lanterns, copper bowls, carved racks holding old scrolls, tarnished mirrors, silver windchimes, carvings chipped into stones, jagged and faded illustrations made from ash rubbed into rude scratchings on wooden panels. All ancient, rich, antique, valuable. Museum pieces.
     The royal guards and Mediators lurking in various corners were optional extras.
     The cups were delicate things, little bowls of a white porcelain that let the light shine through the clear alcohol within. A silver dish held dumplings of cheese and meat, the dipping sauces carefully arranged so mistakes wouldn't happen. Chaeitch was methodically grazing his way through those, punctuating with laps of liquor.
     "None," I said, then to show I had some idea of what was going on: "The Printers Guild does sound interesting."
     Hedia's ears flicked and she took a sip from his own bowl. She murmured something that I didn't catch.
     Ah Thes'ita, however, did. His own ears twitched. "Indeed, that is one way of describing them."
     Now my attention stopped navel-gazing and sat up. "There's something I should know?"
     His lordship's expression didn't change. "There's no problem. That guild is somewhat fractious, but they are established and respected."
     "Dangerous?" Chaeitch ventured.
     "Not in the least. But there was some concern after the last meeting was postponed following that incident. They have requested it as soon as is practical."
     "A. I see. They have been insistent?"
     He tilted his cup from side to side. "That is another appropriate term."
     Hedia interjected. "They are most anxious for a private meeting with you."
     I slowly nodded. Perhaps there was something I wasn't getting there.
     "Meantime, there have been some... revision of security arrangements. The Guild has provided some new information. We are acting on that."
     Rraerch cocked her head at the mediator. "You are making some progress with finding who's responsible for these attacks?"
     Rohinia wasn't drinking or eating, just sitting and listening and tamping his pipe. He tipped a hand and said, "Investigations are still ongoing. I'm afraid I cannot divulge more."
     Rraerch didn't quite sigh. "Very well," she said.
     "It will be more successful?" Chaeitch asked.
     "If our guest here doesn't take it into his head to go running off again," the Mediator rumbled.
     "And after I go to all the trouble of handing you some answers in a closet," I sighed.
     "Mikahhhh," Rraerch hissed.
     "And the Guild is grateful for that," Rohinia said without missing a beat. "In fact the Hall has some questions for you. There will be a formal request arriving in the next twenty four hours. You will have to find some time for that."
     This time my sigh was more exasperated. "Great."
     Chaeitch waved a philosophical hand and dumpling at me. "What is it you say? No good deed?"
     That meeting ticked on for a few more hours, but the Mediator's announcement did cause a few upsets. Plans were made, schedules shifted and itineraries adjusted. Some of my sightseeing requests were... adjusted. And there was also to be another formal evening that was already firmly mired in the schedule like a rock in a river — it wasn't shifting so everything had to move around it.
     At the conclusion of the meeting the Rris all flowed to their feet and I started to stand, but the Rris king spoke up: "Ah Rihey, if I may speak with you?"
     All the other Rris froze. Looked at me.
     "Sir?" I ventured.
     "Alone, if I may," he said and there was a visible ripple of uncertainty before Rraerch inclined her head.
     "Very good, sir. We will wait outside."
     "Thank you."
     And as they exited the King looked at the Mediator. "Constable, if I may..." he asked.
     Rohinia tapped his pipe with a claw. "You know the rules."
     "Yes, constable. This is not business. I will respect the prohibitions."
     The Mediator considered, then inclined his head and turned, following the others. The guards also departed, closing the door behind them and leaving me alone with the King.
     "Interesting trick," I said. "I'd like to be able to get rid of Mediators that easily."
     Ah Thes'ita set hands on the table, studied me. He was an older Rris: grey on the tips of his fur and around the muzzle, a heavy-set build that came from muscle. "I have some questions."
     "They are ones I can answer?"
     "I believe they are." He cocked his head. "Why are you here?"
     "Ah. You mean why am I here in Rris lands, not why am I in Red Leaves."
     "Yes."
     "I'd have to give you the same answer I've given everyone else who's asked that."
     "That you don't know how or why you came here."
     "Yes."
     "And you came from... another world."
     "That is pretty much it."
     "Do you think that's believable?"
     "I think it's the truth. If I was looking for believable I think I could've done better."
     His muzzle furrowed briefly. "We have ships exploring, you know."
     "That's great. And if they find anything I'd really like to hear about it, because every time someone asks why did I come here? Why did I appear in a tiny town in the mountains, not knowing the language or anything about the people? All I can say is 'I don't know'."
     Perhaps that wasn't the reply he'd been expecting. He stared, tapped a finger. "The Guild has said essentially the same."
     "Something we agree on then," I said. "Not many of those moments."
     "So I understand. But you also seem to agree with their restrictions on what information you hand out."
     "Some of the wrong information in the wrong place already caused problems here, didn't it?"
     "The anarchists? You are referring to the repeaters."
     "That's a part of it — weapons. Everyone wants weapons. Just a few repeaters and they caused trouble, didn't they."
     His muzzle dipped. "Beyond their numbers."
     "That's a small part of it. There's an old expression among my people: give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day; teach him to fish and you'll feed him for life." I frowned, considering my translation. "Does that make sense?"
     "I've heard something similar," he said. "Your example is a metaphor?"
     "A. The information I can provide is the result of hundreds of years of... learning. Trial and error. Learning and experimenting and trying, and retrying and understanding. It's as you do things now: things were discovered and people worked to find out more about it. They learned new things. Which led to other discoveries."
     He just stared. "You are saying we won't?"
     "Not if you are handed everything. Oh, you will certainly make progress, but you will miss a lot along the way. And in time that will all add up."
     He was still staring at me.
     "And now you think I'm just moralizing, a? It's just hot air? A lot of words that don't matter when compared with power and money, a?"
     His expression didn't flinch.
     "Thought so," I said. "You ever seen what happens to a country that grabs for knowledge it doesn't understand? Buys the newest fancy machines and then can't repair them when they break? It's not pretty."
     "And you would have us sit still while neighbors such as Land of Water build these devices?"
     "And you'd take these devices, but not the knowledge of how they really work," I said. "How to smelt the metal and make the parts. And even if you did, you wouldn't have the tools and machines and people to make the parts."
     I shrugged, the way I was built to. "And if you don't care about that, then the cost of continually paying for repairs and machines you can't make yourself can grow to be quite substantial."
     I think that had more of an impact. That inscrutably feline face was difficult to read.
     "So we should just trust you?" he asked. "Your hosts?"
     "No," I said. "Treat it like any business deal: each side is out for gain and if something is too good to be true, then it probably is."
     Slowly, his head tilted. Those eyes didn't blink, but an ear flicked. "It's true," he said. "You can speak. You use words. But talking with you feels like being just one half of two different conversations."
     I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle. "I've felt something like that before," I admitted.
     "Is that why she's afraid?"
     "What?" I tried to figure out who he was talking about. The Mediator? "Who?"
     "Your teacher," he said and seemed surprised when I reacted. "You really haven't noticed?
     I hesitated, wondering if I was missing something again. He'd veered way off subject, and he probably had a reason for that, but it was a concerning subject. "What do you mean?"
     The Rris king hesitated and I thought he was going to glance at the Mediator. "There is an... uncertainty there. Just moments of nervousness."
     "Oh," I half-said. Nodded reluctantly. "There are moments," I confessed, "but it is difficult to tell. You have had some experience with the difference in my smile. And all this... She's... this isn't what she's accustomed to."
     "Huhn. She owes debt to you."
     "No. Not like that."
     "Really?" he looked puzzled. "I have to wonder why she stays then."
     I tensed, reading that as an insult. Or was he genuinely curious. Or was it... "I believe it's her decision."
     He cocked his head ever so slightly, obviously trying to read something in my words. Then he huffed air, "Ah. Quite. Well, thank you for clearing that up. Now, I won't keep you — your minders will be getting anxious."

The end of a long day.
     There'd been other meetings after the one with the King. Regularly scheduled programing had been interrupted by my activities, and more than a few petitioners weren't happy about it. So, the compromise was that I meet with them in conferences in the Palace.
     Merchants and wealthy landowners, venturists and wealthseekers, curious lords and ladies... a half-dozen of the usual suspects. And the usual routine: they had questions and I answered what I could. But with the Mediators sitting there what I could say was limited. A great deal of it turned into a promotional tour, with hints of potential changes that could be very beneficial if the right people knew about them. And of course those select few were present today. Any request for details was returned with mentions of new trade markets, efficiencies in operation, and increased profit.
     Yeah, it was basically appealing to self-interest to push a political agenda. If Land-ofWater could get the backbone of Bluebetter's leaning our way, some of the larger projects would have a far greater chance of getting off the ground. That was the plan, anyway.
     Actuating it... that was where the long, irritating, Sisyphean task of persuading people came in.
     So, myself and the others in the delegation sat with Bluebetter observers and a few representatives at a time and talked and talked and talked while Mediators acted as neutron rods. And there were raised voices and arguments and sometimes even agreement, but it was damn difficult for me to see if we were making headway.
     And at the end of it we left those stuffy offices for the shockingly chilly air of the palace hallways. Through the warped panes of the leaded windows lining the upper hall I could see a courtyard. Most was shadow and snow, but higher up the golden hour was washing upper rooftops and chimneys with warm light. And even higher above those loomed a skyscape of bruise-colored stormclouds, the late sun liming them in twilight and gold as they brooded, promising a stormy night.
     "A fruitful day," Chaeitch cheerfully proclaimed —'Fruitful' being a very generous translation.
     "Accomplishing what?" I asked.
     "There's interest in our proposals," Rraerch said. "Considerable. It wasn't a waste."
     "That much? I didn't notice."
     "Mikah," Chaeitch snorted, "believe it or not there are perhaps a few minor things that slip by you."
     "Ah, that was sarcasm, wasn't it? I've heard of that."
     "It can be taught!" he barked.
     "Yes, Mikah," Rraerch sighed and twitched a muzzle towards our escorts. That gesture didn't slip by me. "They're interested, but they want the best deal, of course."
     "Funny how you give a merchant a good deal and they seem to think you're stealing from them."
     She waved a shrug. "Only the successful ones."
     The guards at my door had heard us coming. They were alert and one of the staff had the door open. I bade the others a good night at my door and headed in. Paused at the threshold. "Chihirae," I asked one of the guards at the door, "is she in?"
     "No, sir. Her ladyship is meeting with his lordship this evening."
     "His lordship?" That surprised me.
     "Yes, sir. That is not a problem?"
     "It's... no. No problem. Thank you," I said, heading inside.
     "Yes, sir," the guard behind me said again, sounding uncertain.
     Staff were waiting in the foyer, to take my coat and moccasins and the steward to tell me evening meal was waiting for me. After that day the airy warmth of those rooms felt wonderful. No stuffy air tasting of stressed Rris; no frigid inhalations that froze your sinuses and made your chest ache. Just a pervasive warmth and the smell of hot food. I followed that to the parlor.
     Cook had been busy. There were covered dishes. Under the covers were things like breaded dumplings with meat and cheese inside; buffalo ribs and sauce; strips of marinated beef wrapped around a filling of grilled mushroom. Served with a choice of wine, brandy, or a carafe of water. Hot and filling, not too carno-centric, and easy to eat after a busy day. I went easy on the wine, avoided the bottled nitrous that was the peach brandy, and tended toward the water. Boiled, but still a bit gritty. I'd had worse in Jersey.
     A long shower after that. That was a wind-down I needed at the end of days like that. One lamp in the bathroom casting the barest light while steaming hot water sluiced down in that Rris interpretation of a shower. Just standing in the darkness, the sound and sensation of water drumming against the copper walls and against my battered hide. Washing away that sweat that always came from the stress of those heated meetings. Thawing the knots frozen into muscles.
     I stepped out feeling a little more human than I had going in. And when I turned the water off I could hear the sound from the bedroom. Piano music.
     Dark in there. The only glow was the tinged luminance from the laptop screen, flickering with colors of the halls of the Doge's Palace in Venice and a BBC dialogue and classic musical accompaniment. Chihirae looked up, eyes flashing to gleaming dimes. "Ah, finally done. You looked restful in there, so I didn't want to disturb you."
     "I thought it was too quiet."
     "The guard said you were asking after me."
     "Oh," I said, ran a hand through wet hair as I considered what it was I'd been wanting to say. "That was true."
     She stared at me for a while. Blinked lazily. "And it was regarding... ?" she prodded.
     "Oh. Huh. I think I was just seeing if you were in. Available. To talk, get some food. But you were with his Lordship?"
     "That's right," she said, cocking her head and setting the laptop aside. The screen continued shining watery light, casting the weirdest shadows across her face. "You have a concern?"
     "Only that he might be trying to get to me through you."
     She laughed. "Mikah, everyone does that."
     "They do?"
     "Absolutely. I'm accustomed to it. And the Guild was present, so he was polite."
     "He is good at that."
     "A," she said. "I think he knows I'm not going to do anything, but he likes to play the game."
     "He is bothering you?"
     "No. He's an excellent conversationalist. He's educated. Rot, Mikah, he's a king. It's interesting. And he has given me access to private libraries. His private library. There are documents I've only heard of in there."
     "Ah," I said. "Okay," I said. "As long as you were enjoying yourself."
     She blinked slowly, in time with a lash of her tail. Then she flashed teeth at me. "He did say I was considered an expert on you."
     "An expert, a?"
     "Oh, yes. Why you do this, why you do that. I know all that."
     "Really? That much?"
     "Really. All about you, naked ape," her grin glistened and she rolled legs off the bed, flowed to her feet. "You don't believe me?"
     "I'm sure you think you are."
     "Patronizing, a?" She sauntered forward a step, swayed, then she whipped forward and back and suddenly I wasn't holding the towel anymore. She just cast it aside and said, "I do know that if I do this..."
     I stood, stared. She was wearing only fur, painted in a glimmering outline by the inconstant laptop glow, lithe as a gymnast and articulated like nothing human. Nothing I hadn't seen before, but when she moved like that, moved like oiled sin...
     She was panting when she rounded on me again, drop-jawed grin, sidling closer, not quite in reach as she looked me up and down and laughed again. "You see? A male in spring, using only your eyes."
     "Proves nothing," I sniffed, resisting a deep-seated urge to turn away.
     "Your most outstanding feature," she said and I could read the teasing in that.
     "That is actually worse in in your tongue than it is in mine," I told her.
     "Huh," she snorted, eyeing me as she started circling around me. "Bad is it?"
     I turned, found she wasn't there. Turned the other way and she was there, half-eclipsed by my shadow, laughing again. "Yet you want something?"
     And when I took a step toward her she just melted away again, chittering a laugh. Just toying with me.
     "Or don't you want it?"
     "Or perhaps it keeps running away," I retorted as she twisted away from me again.
     "Perhaps you're not trying hard enough, a?"
     "You... are you afraid of me?" And as soon as I said it I knew the tone wasn't right.
     She stopped, cocked her head in an incredulous look. "Afraid of... that was what you talked to his Lordship about, isn't it. That was what you wanted to talk to me about."
     "Then... you did say something."
     "It wasn't that, Mikah," she said. "I've said before: I don't fear you. Never that. I know you. I know that you wouldn't do that. I also know..." teeth glinted for a moment before she moved back and snapped the laptop shut.
     And the darkness was absolute velvet.
     "I also know that," her voice was suddenly beside me, "you are like this in the dimness." Air moved in front of my face. A hand waving? I stepped away and there was a touch on my back. When I turned, a hand stroked my flank. And when I spun that way a furry hand rubbed across my cheek and was gone before I could react.
     "Pale in the dark," growled the voice in the dark. "Blind in the dark. And I should be afraid?"
     I turned my head to face the voice, but there was the faintest sound of claws on the marble floor and I knew she wasn't there anymore. "I should be afraid of you then?" I said quietly.
     A chitter. "Apologies," I heard and then flinched when a furry body pressed against my back, stayed there as she leaned close to wrap arms around. "There are a lot of concerns," I felt her voice rumble through her chest along with the lublublub of her heartbeat, "but you aren't a fear."
     "You are too kind," I said.
     "Aren't I," she retorted, her hands wandering and then gripping and squeezing hard enough to feel my own pulse. "I might do you another favor."
     "Not breaking my penis?"
     She growled and squeezed again. "I could tell you which way the bed is."
     In the dark and the turning I realized she was right — I was disoriented. "Would you? I'd be ever so grateful."
     So I let her lead me in the darkness. And when I felt my leg bump against the bed I caught her up in both arms and dumped the abruptly yowling lady on the sheets. She didn't put up much of a fight.

The Mediator Hall in Red Leaves looked nothing like the other halls I'd visited in other cities, but it had exactly the same air about it. I guessed that whatever buildings they occupied they shaped to suit their own ends and needs.
     High walls around the compound. Gates and the armed guards there in their storm-crow coats. Open courtyards overlooked by brick and stone buildings. As in the other Guild Halls I'd had cause to visit there were apprentices doing the drudge work of sweeping away snow and ice.
     Inside were the same Spartan surroundings. What artwork there was tended towards things that looked like trophies, or relics, or the telling of stories, not paintings and things that were beautiful for the sake of being beautiful. There were, however, lots of stone halls and rooms. As I followed the Mediators I caught a glimpse of what looked like wooden filing cabinets in one big room. Ranks of things like card catalogs, from floor to ceiling. Another room with rows of writing desks.
     They left me for a while, waiting alone in a little octagonal antechamber with cracked and worn cushions, a colorful-if-threadbare rug, ancient scent-sticks mounted in alcoves, and four locked doors.
     I sat. I hurried up and waited.
     Eventually a lock clacked and a door opened. An impassive Mediator steward ushered me out, along another hall, another door.
     The office was a brighter place, in the upper reaches of the Guild Hall. The upper quarter of one wall was angled where the roof cut in. Sunlight glowed through dusty dormer windows, but the lacquered wooden floor was clean. There was a low table on a rug. The obligatory cushions. Around the white plaster walls were shelves of books; racks of scrolls. A spherical lamp of brass and stained glass hung in one of the dormers, lazily twisting in a draft and sending flecks of colored light drifting across the white walls. The specks drifted across several broken stone tablets hanging in frames. The markings or writing engraved in them was worn, indecipherable, and oddly familiar. Further investigation had to wait as Rohinia gestured for me to sit at the vacant cushion in front of a typical low desk. It was cold enough for my breath to frost.
     The Mediator Guild Commissioner in Red Leaves was sitting and watching impassively. We'd met before, only the last meeting had been a clandestine shadow-council sort of thing in a smoky back room. I thought it probably best not to bring that up.
     This time I could see him clearly and he was a lot less imposing without the theatrics. Older, grizzled, but not overly large or distinctive. But Jenes'ahn had been absolutely right in that there was no way he would be Commissioner in a capital city without being highly capable at his job. He sat like a furry sphinx and watched impassively as I settled myself where shown — right before the desk. At hand on the well-worn desktop were several thick leather-bound books. To the side was a small warming tray. There was a gently-steaming jug on it, along with some small cups.
     Rohinia and Jenes'ahn were already seated, waiting, on cushions just behind my shoulders. The other Rris in the room — probably the Commissioner's secretary — was seated off to one side, a battered lapdesk across his knees and sheaves of paper and pen at the ready.
     "Mikah," Rohinia said. "His lordship ah Wildtree."
     That was how it translated.
     The Commissioner didn't take his eyes off me. "Ah Rihey. Have we met?"
     I tried to hide my nervousness as I met that gaze. "I couldn't say, sir. I do have difficulty with faces and dim light."
     The Commissioner looked at the others and stroked his chin. "As you said, Constable."
     "A," Rohinia said.
     I didn't have time to wonder what that was about.
     "Ah Rihey," Wildtree said to me, "the constables assigned to guard you have informed me that the other night you attempted to evade their care and stole out to meet with a wanted fugitive? Is this true?"
     "Not really," I said.
     "Explain."
     "I went to try and talk with the writer of a play that seemed to be about me. I don't believe he was a wanted fugitive."
     "You did that without informing the Guild?"
     "He had written about me. There were details he knew and I wanted to know how he knew them. I felt he would be more likely to speak to me than your people."
     "You really think he would be less afraid of you than the Guild?"
     "I think... I think he'd spoken to someone who told him what I am. I wanted to find out who that was."
     "You did. How?"
     "His lordship didn't tell you that as well?" I asked.
     The hesitation was almost undetectable. "No."
     At least he didn't insult me by denying it. "I asked around," I said. "I got an address. I went there. You know that — you followed me. Hell, you took me there."
     "A carriage took you to a certain street. There you sat for a while and watched an address, but did nothing else. An individual approached the property and entered. Did you recognize that person?"
     "Not at the time. Too far. Too dark."
     "Shortly after, several more individuals approached and entered. It was then you left the carriage and followed them in. The constable reported that you locked the door after yourself."
     "A."
     "The constable reports that she heard gunshots fired from inside, on the second floor. Six of them, which suggests multiple weapons or a repeater. She obtained entry and hastened upstairs. She says she came upon you in the second-story hallway. You manhandled her and shut her in a closet."
     "Apparently. Yes."
     A pause. "You have an explanation for this?"
     "I didn't know who it was. A stranger rushing toward me in a dark hall and I was out of bullets."
     "She told you who she was."
     "And I said I was out of ammunition. After that gunfight I couldn't hear an orchestra playing in the same room. My ears were ringing for the next few hours."
     He didn't huff, but he looked past me at Jenes'ahn. She hadn't said anything, but I could sense that if she'd had a fuse she'd have been set to blow. "So you deny assaulting the constable."
     "Apparently I did throw her in a closet, but she was disguising herself."
     "Huhnn," Wildtree ruminated, still watching Jenes'ahn. One of her eyelids twitched.
     "Plausible," he eventually said. "But, I think not. I think you knew quite well who it was — the entire reason you didn't provide an actual address. You had an idea we would stop you if we had all the details, so you kept some to yourself. You knew we would follow. You were expecting Mediators to arrive. How does that sound"
     "Plausible," I shrugged, doing what I could to conceal my own tension. "Still doesn't change the fact that I didn't know who it was. I threw them in a closet and locked the door."
     The expression that met with was a blank stone-wall. He was hiding his tells; trying to read me. With how much success, I wasn't sure.
     "You are saying you didn't know who it was."
     "A."
     "You weren't trying to protect the other one?"
     "I was trying to protect all of us."
     "Yourself, the playwright, and the other."
     "You mean Mai?"
     He'd sidestepped the assault issue. I just hoped that with everything else going on it was considered inconsequential in the greater scheme. Their main interest would lie in the one they knew least about; the lady who'd already made them look like chumps.
     "The one who went by the name Maithris aesh Teremae. Yes. You met her."
     "I did."
     "Do you know who she really is?"
     "No. Do you?"
     "Do you know who she works for?"
     "Not a country. She told me that much. If I can believe it."
     Another pause. "What happened between you that night?"
     "We talked."
     "That was all? There was no violence? You didn't seek retribution?"
     "What? No."
     "And what did you talk about?"
     I gave him an abridged version of that night's events. Didn't forget to mention the sandwiches, just to wind Jenes'ahn up a bit more. He listened without interrupting. And off to the side his associate scribbled away, head scanning back and forth in sync with his pen.
     It took a long while to go through my tale. A long while working my tongue around a language formed by and for another kind of mouth shape. By the end of my story my voice was rasping.
     "And that was where Rohinia was waiting," I said. "You probably have all the reports from there."
     "That is it?"
     "A," I rasped.
     "You let her go?"
     "A."
     He sat quietly for a few seconds, paging through other notes on his desk while flecks of color from the lamp drifted across the papers. Then he looked up. "There is drink there. You sound like you need it. If you would be so good, Constable?"
     Rohinia was the one who moved to pour from the jug. I took the offered bowl-like cup in both hands. The liquid was warm, steaming, slightly green. I smelled mint and looked up at the Mediators in trepidation.
     "It's not poisoned," Jenes'ahn said from just behind me.
     I felt them watching as I sipped. The Commissioner finished reading his notes. The liquid was hot, it tasted of mint and honey and other things. A tea that did help my throat. I cautiously set the cup down.
     "Now," Wildtree said, "tell us why you are protecting this woman."
     "The one who betrayed and kidnapped me?"
     "A."
     "Why would I do that?"
     "I was hoping you could explain that," he said. "Constable Jenes'ahn does have a theory."
     "Which is?"
     From over my shoulder she said quietly, "You are insane."
     I felt remarkably calm as I considered that. "That would explain a lot."
     "An obsession, she says," Wildtree continued. "You form attachments with people. This has been noted. You entered into sexual activities and formed an attachment with her. You stayed close with her and favored her. Without any obligation or expectation or even an understanding of those relationships you protect her. In spite of her background and what she's done to you, you protect her."
     That caught me by surprise. Just the... misconceptions; the way he'd gotten everything I'd considered so obvious and normal so wrong. A reflection of what seemed to happen to me so often when I thought I'd begun to understand them. I stared, then had to laugh.
     "He finds something amusing," Jenes'ahn said.
     "What would that be?" Wildtree said, absolutely motionless.
     "What," I choked back the stressed grin and squinted up at the rainbows bursting through that stained-glass lamp hanging in the window, "makes you think she needs my help?"
     "You are protecting her."
     I shook my head, trying not to grin again. "She doesn't need that! I was there because she wanted me to be there. She'd arranged that. Everything. The ones attacking her may not have been according to her plans, but everything else was. What I have told you was what she told me, and she would have known that very well so she didn't tell me anything she didn't want you to know. So, in there is information that might be useful to you, but most likely will make you do something that will be useful to her."
     "How can you know this?"
     "Because there was a trail leading here. While we were coming here there were signs. All the way. Arrested for vagrancy? That wouldn't happen to her. And why tell an unknown playwright about me? Good bait, a?"
     He looked past me at the other mediators. "Is this... feasible?"
     "Doubtful," Rohinia said. "It would [something] a impressive grasp of not only Guild procedures but Mikah's mindset."
     "She did say her employers wanted an expert," I murmured.
     Wildtree stared eyes black slits in amber as he studied me. The other Rris sat silent. The scribe was motionless, pen poised over the paper.
     "Alright," the Commissioner finally rumbled. "Then by your theory there is something in your tale that is important. Again. From the beginning."
     I sighed, looked around at implacable faces, and started again.

The carriage rocked. My head lolled, banging against the side and I jolted awake again, blinking in the darkness. I hadn't been aware I'd dozed off. The carriage bumped again, turning to the right. I couldn't see anything in the night outside. Or inside. There were the two Mediators sitting on the bench opposite, but in the black I couldn't see a thing.
     I was tired, groggy. My throat hurt after talking for hours.
     "We there yet?" I croaked.
     "Still a couple of kilometers to go," growled a Rris voice. From where Rohinia was sitting.
     Another twenty minutes then. If nothing happened.
     "Did you mean it?" That came from Jenes'ahn.
     "Mean what?"
     "What you said about the doctor. Was that truthful? Or were you trying to save your own hide?"
     Another turn and a skerrick of moonlight flicked in through a window. It just made shadows writhe, glimmered briefly across legs and leather and metal edges and a furry hand tapping a claw on a thigh.
     "It was all true," I shook my head. I was muzzy. I'd been feeling it all evening: not quite drunk, but not quite all there.
     "Mikah," Jenes'ahn growled, "What is your game?"
     "If there's a game going on," I sighed tiredly, "then I'm the ball. And the ball doesn't get much say in what happens to it."
     "You are protecting her, no matter what you say. Do you really hope to meet her again?"
     "I think that's up to her."
     "You know the Guild will find her."
     "Good for you," I said. I was shivering, but I didn't feel cold. "You did drug that tea, didn't you."
     "A."
     "Trying to kill me?"
     "I said it wasn't poison. A mild dose. You've had it before."
     "And you ask me to trust you."
     "What are you hoping for, Mikah?" she growled. "That she will return to you? That you can live that life again? You can't believe that could happen."
     I tried to see her face in the darkness, to see anything in that dark space. Was she joking?
     "You don't, do you?"
     "I know that can't happen."
     "Then what? You want the same as us. You want to find those involved in this. She knows this, but you're keeping her from us. Why? Is it your need?"
     "That... is not the right way of describing it."
     Was that a hand waving a shrug? "It describes what you do, so it is right. You say she led you there, but then you say she told you nothing. That does not make sense."
     "I told you what she told me, which was what she wanted me to know."
     "You are sure of that?" That was Rohinia, a low growl from another part of the cab. "You may have surprised her; interrupted her before she was ready."
     I sighed, rubbed my eyes. "I can't be sure of anything. She just... seemed to have answers she wanted to tell me. Other things she couldn't."
     "Couldn't or wouldn't?" Jenes'ahn asked.
     "Yes," I said.
     "What does that mean?" she said as the carriage lurched and rocked over a bumpy part.
     My response was to lean forward and puke over their feet.

I splashed water on my face, swilled a mouthful and spat into the sink. With my beard still dripping I leaned over the bowl, bracing myself with both arms and trying to breath steadily. The chills, the bouts of nausea, the purging of dregs of tainted tea had eased, but I still felt drained. I toweled my face dry and then wrapped the towel around my waist.
     A trolley was waiting in the bedroom. There were plates and covered dishes; also a carafe of ice water. I poured a glass and drained it. My appetite was nonexistent, but I picked out a small roll, nibbled at it as I opened the balcony doors onto freezing night air. The cold stung: snow under my feet, air on wet skin. Like a slap to the face. Flakes swirled in the air, melting where they settled on my arms. I breathed steam, staring out at the mountainous architecture of the Palace fading from sight in the icy darkness. Faint lights glimmered in windows. The cold helped clear my head, even made the warm roll taste better.
     A shadow moved across my own as someone moved in the room behind me.
     "Don't tell me you're not cold," Chihirae said.
     "I won't."
     "I saw the Mediators," she said. She touched my back, tracing a scar there, then stood beside me. "They were... unhappy. Again. What did you do?"
     "Something came up."
     "What? What do you mean?"
     I gave her a brief recap.
     "Oh," she said. And there was a silence that might have been someone deciding whether or not to laugh. "They did that? And you..."
     "What goes around comes around, a?" I said.
     "You are feeling better now?"
     "Better? A," I said, looked down at my bare feet sunk in the snow banked up against the balcony balustrade. "Better. But cold now."
     "I don't believe a towel is the correct attire for you in this weather," she observed, nudging ice with her own natural mukluks, puffed out with her winter coat. "Inside, I think."
     I turned my face up the black sky and icy mist for a few more seconds before stepping back into the light and warmth, closing the doors behind us. My feet tingled as the heated floor thawed them.
     "You don't like the cold," Chihirae mused, "but you do things like that."
     "Clears my head."
     "It needed it? Sometimes it seems quite clear of anything at all."
     "Thank you. That makes my day."
     She laughed and settled herself on the bed, legs folded tailor-fashion. "But you are feeling better?"
     "Actually, yes," I said, lifting the lid on another of the dishes on the tray. My appetite was niggling.
     "They should know better than that. Why would they do it?"
     "Because it works on Rris? And they haven't quite realized I'm not Rris."
     "But they know medicine can be dangerous for you."
     "They know it, but do they understand it? Or Rohinia and Jenny know it, but do their superiors?"
     A snort. "Don't let her hear you call her that. What were they asking you about?"
     "That night. With Mai. Everything that happened. What she wanted. All that stuff."
     "And you told them... what?"
     "What I could. She didn't tell me everything. I'm sure of that. She knew they would ask me so... she didn't tell me."
     "A," she said and ears laid back in that way that said she was troubled. "Mikah?" she started, then tried again: "Mikah, what is going on?"
     I sighed and picked up another couple of rolls. Took them back to the bed. Sat down and offered her one. She took it, started to pick it to pieces. "I'm... not entirely sure. There's upset. Because of me, of course. It's not only nations, but Guilds and business interests and those invested in them, the rich and the powerful, they are starting to see change, and they don't like it."
     "They blame you."
     "And can you blame them?" I asked. "A lifetime ago and the world wasn't much different from the way it'd been a hundred years before. Now, they see me, they see new materials, devices, mechanical engines replacing wind, animals, even people. They see change. Some of them just don't want that. They want to stop it. Others... they see opportunity. And they want to... I'm not sure if they want to protect it or grab it for themselves.
     "So, they're fighting among themselves. And that fighting is turning from secret little initiatives to more open actions. Mai said she was... trying to help us. She was giving them information which was not wrong, but not quite accurate. Their plans were overly elaborate, a? She said that was her doing."
     "Mikah," Chihirae said slowly. "The inn. They killed everyone. She assisted with that?!""
     "I don't know," I confessed. "She said she didn't have control over that."
     "You can't believe you really knew her, can you?"
     That simple statement tore at me. "I thought I did."
     "I think she frightens me. She sounds like Guild, but she is going against them."
     "She did save my life."
     "After betraying you!"
     "I know," was all I could say and flopped back onto the clean sheets. The ceiling didn't have any answers. After a moment a warm and hairy weight settled on my midriff as Chihirae laid back and used me for a pillow.
     "And you still need her," she rumbled.
     I reached down — an almost automatically-ancient action to scratch at the furry head. She made an inquisitive noise and settled.
     "I think," I said carefully, "in your way of saying it, I am obligated to her?"
     "Mikah," she said slowly. "I don't think that really means what you think it does. I think you are making it sound like you owe her money."
     "I mean it in the same way I feel about you."
     A low chitter. "You owe me money also then?"
     "No... I... I love you, Chihirae. I love her. I do owe you, more than I can repay. don't want anything to happen to either of you."
     "That word," she said quietly, regarding the ceiling. "Your obsession; your need. You can't explain it better?"
     I sighed under the weight of her head. "I love you. I love this food. I love this view. I love this painting. This country. This house... They are all the same words, but different meanings. Especially when talking about people. It is an emotion: liking, an affection, a desire..."
     "A need?" she interjected.
     I considered, then confessed, "It can be. But it isn't about taking..."
     "And I can say the same of obligation," she said. "You say it and it doesn't quite... fit. When you use the words, you turn it into a debt. It isn't about that."
     I scratched at her chin. A low rumble reverberated through her body. I thought about cats, about their relationships. They gave if they were given to. How would that evolve into a sapient being's emotional toolkit?
     "That is very confusing," I said.
     "Huhn," she grunted, settled herself. "And that is a familiar feeling."
     For a while we lay there, me scratching her in the places she liked; her keeping my skin warm. "So," I ventured after a few minutes, "have you felt like that about anyone?"
     "Confused? All the time around you."
     "I mean, an affection; an obsession and obligation."
     "Huhn," she said again. Then nothing.
     "Nothing? All these wealthy men wanting to meet and talk with you? You never found one that lit your fuse?"
     A snort. A laugh. "Mikah, they're interested in me because I'm close to you. It gets repetitive when the conversation keeps coming around to you."
     "They're that bad?"
     "Oh, they are witty and charming and wealthy and composed and they all seem to be after more than just me."
     "Oh," I said. Then: "There was Chaeitch."
     Another pause. "That was spring," she said. "It's not the same. More... scratching an itch."
     "He's a good man."
     "Ah," she sighed. "I know he is."
     "And that's all he was? Scratching an itch?"
     "Like you are. Up a little... left... there. And you really concerned him that night."
     "What? I didn't mean to intrude on you..."
     "No. Not that. You were upset. And we don't always know what you might do when that happens. It worried people."
     I gnawed at that. Turned it over.
     "So, he doesn't want to upset me?" I ventured.
     "I think no-one does."
     I thought back, to things the Mediators and others had said to me; to things I'd briefly considered but hadn't wanted to dwell on. That suspicion crept up again.
     "Chihirae..." I started to say.
     "A?"
     I swallowed it. It was a question I had to ask, but not of her. "No. Nothing. I just think... you should keep an open mind, a?"
     Another laugh. "Open mind?" She raised her head, dropped it against my belly. "You remember the one who thought you might be more than a wild beast? She's right here. Although she's still not entirely sure she was correct."
     "Was she the one who put an arrow through me? I forget... oof!"
     Another thump of the head. "But you did steal a book."
     "In that case you're quite right: I deserved it."
     "Huhn," she relaxed, leaning into my scratching. "And what should I open my mind to?"
     "Just... there will be someone who is good for you. When you find him, go with him."
     A pause.
     "You don't want me with you?"
     "It's not about what I want," I said. "Chi, you say I need. That is a small part of it. The most of it is not about what I want, it's about doing what is best for the other. You can't take unless you are willing to give."
     Silence. She was staring at the ceiling.
     "I'm... not sure it works in your words," I finished lamely.
     "To renew the debt by giving to the other?" she ventured.
     Now I tried to read the ceiling, spinning the words around in my head to make them fit into a framework I could identify with.
     "That's not right?" she asked after I'd been silent for too long.
     "I don't think... right and wrong work here either," I finally said. Almost laughed at the frustration. "Like telling an elk it's wrong for eating grass — it works for the elk. It's what it was made to do."
     "And is that keeping an open mind? Doing something that is intrinsically wrong?"
     My fingers scratched away on autopilot while I considered that. "I think perhaps it is like swimming: it is something you don't usually do, but if you do it you have to work at it."
     Under my fingers she was idling — a low rumbling. "That's how you feel? It's work?"
     "It's... you know: I say the wrong thing, I smile at the wrong time, I misunderstand what someone else says and people get upset. I have to be careful. All the time."
     "Huhn," she considered, before adding, "Even now?"
     My hands were doing what human hands had done with a dog's fur under them for fifteen thousand years. Her kind didn't have that reflex. But... I couldn't say that. And I couldn't do that with just anyone. But she... she wasn't anyone. "A. Even now," I said, and smiled. "But it does help to have someone to meet me halfway."

Even before first light rolled around we were no longer alone. Yeircaez was overseeing the opening of the drapes onto a grey pre-dawn, the laying out of clean towels and clothes. Hedia stood at the foot of the bed to inform us that his lordship would see me for breakfast in a half-hour. None of them paid the least apparent attention to the human and the Rris in bed together. And all Chihirae did was growl something indistinct and burrow deeper under the covers. I didn't have that luxury.
     The heating was working that morning, so even while the windows were etched with frost the rooms were warm. I showered. Stepped out to find Jenes'ahn quietly standing and watching and waiting, dressed in her road-worn leathers with matching pistols and blades. I didn't give her the satisfaction of a reaction, just dried and dressed for cold weather and reflected that I must've really pissed her off.
     Shortly thereafter I was ushered to a place at the King's table. Rraerch and Chaeitch settled to either side, straight-backed and cross-legged on their cushions on that gaudy rug. Morning light was just beginning to wash over what was promising to be another drab day and it was cold in there; cold enough that my breath and the mulled wine were steaming. I was glad I'd bundled up.
     There was food on the table: meats and pies and fruits, but it seemed that we wouldn't be eating straightaway.
     "There will be a decision," his Lordship said without preamble. "There has been a [decree] — local Guild leaders will meet and voice their support or concerns for the proposals Land of Water has put forth."
     Rraerch inclined her head. "Thank you, sir," she said. "A decree is necessary?"
     "Regrettably so," he said. "Delays have been numerous. A quorum is required to make a decision before your time with us expires. This would seem to be the best way to make that happen. In any case, there will be a definitive answer to return to Land of Water."
     "That is appreciated," Rraerch said.
     "Of course you will be wondering what the likely outcome will be."
     A polite smile. "The question does rise in the mind."
     His lordship picked up a sliver of grilled fish on the tines of a silver fork. "Indications are... favorable, but of course I cannot guarantee that will be the final outcome. You understand."
     "Quite."
     The Rris king gave a satisfied huff. "Five days until the decision. I'm sure you have enough to keep busy until then. I understand there are a lot of invitations. Today is a visit with the chemists guild, a?"
     "A," Rraerch said. "There was some discussion about how much we should allow for a small guild, but apparently Mikah feels it is important."
     "Huhn, I wish you luck," the King said and then gestured to the table. "Please, eat — you will need it."
     Staff placed dishes in front of us and lifted covers on meats and eggs and pastries. I didn't need to be told twice. Chaeitch... he didn't even need to be told once and was already champing away on bacon.
     "Troublesome?" Rraerch asked, being a bit more civilized in her degustation.
     "A fractious bunch. Most of the time they seem be more interested in their chemicals than in the working of the world. They have chairs who will forget to turn up to functions because they have an experiment boiling away."
     "Ah, I understand mercury can do this," she said.
     "No. I believe they simply prefer fiddling around with odd-smelling substances to interacting with their contemporaries."
     "Extraordinary," Chaeitch and I murmured simultaneously. The King looked surprised and Rraerch hastily slipped in:
     "I believe I can sympathize," she said and a finger tapped a claw on the table. "We have... similar issues sometimes."
     "And there is the Artists Guild," he said and looked at me. "Ah Rihey, you are aware they have been petitioning to have you pay Guild dues?"
     I blinked. "Is that a joke?"
     "Not at all."
     I still hesitated. "I was not aware. And why?"
     "You do practice art, don't you?"
     "That's..." I frowned down at my roast quail. "I don't know if it is exactly art. It wasn't my occupation. Similar skills required, but not what you would consider art."
     "Paintings and drawing? I have heard you have taken commissions for portraits."
     Ah. That wasn't exactly wrong.
     "They were among the skills required for my occupation. I... made things look attractive. People are more likely to select a product that looks attractive and whose promotional materials are well made."
     "That was an actual occupation were you come from?"
     "Not so different here. Look at your tableware: you prefer elegant silver and plates that look good. You want clothes that look good. Buildings. Furniture. All designed to look good."
     "And you knew what looked good?"
     "A bit more than that. How things work together. A way to present them in an agreeable way. You could take several colors you like and paint a room in them. The results might be... not good. Many colors don't work together. There are similar rules about images on a page. Or written words, although I cannot apply those to your writing. I had skills and tools to make things look... well-crafted. If a product is well and clearly presented, it is more likely to sell."
     "Huhn," he mused. "I thought some of the material that was presented by aesh Smither here looked uncommonly attractive. I perhaps should re-examine it?" "If you like," I said. "The facts are there, just made clearer. Lying about things is another profession."
     "I believe the term you are looking for is 'politician'," he offered gruffly. "In any case, the Guild seems to think that if you are practicing you should be applying for membership and paying dues."
     I looked at Rraerch. "Can they do that?"
     She waved a shrug. "I think... they are within their rights. They do have a charter in this city, but I am not sure of the legal ramifications. And I believe Mikah has an audience with them tomorrow afternoon."
     "That is correct," the King said as he cut into a piece of black blood sausage. "I'm afraid I have no further information regarding their intentions. That is something you will have to discuss with them."
     It was a caution. The rest of the breakfast was pleasantries. And shortly after, as we left his chambers, Rraerch kept her mouth very firmly shut. Until we got back to my quarters.
     She ushered me and Chaeitch into the drawing and then shut the door behind us.
     "You do find the most interesting inconveniences, don't you," she said conversationally.
     "You mean the Artists Guild thing? In what way is that my doing?"
     A sigh. "How the rot did the finger painters get the impression you dabbled in their field? Something to do with commissions for royalty?"
     "There a law against that?"
     "No. Not exactly. Perhaps," she said, looking as aggravated as I've ever seen her. "I'm going to have to talk to the embassy and see what the local statutes say on the matter. But the timing on this is suspicious. If his lordship hadn't cautioned us, we would've walked into it."
     "Is it serious?" Chaeitch asked.
     "Until I find out exactly what the local ordinances are, I don't know. At worst it would mean that Mikah would fall under Artists Guild jurisdiction. You know that means that all property — including knowledge and techniques — would be accessible by the Guild."
     "Oh, come on!" was a close translation of Chaeitch's exasperated snort.
     "A, quite," she said thoughtfully. "That would be the worst possible outcome. And hopefully unlikely. And the Mediators Guild would certainly have something to say about it. It seems more likely they were using it to get their noses into the kill before it was all gone. Just getting our attention."
     "And that it did," I said.
     "A," Rraerch agreed. "Thanks to his Lordship mentioning it to us. If he hadn't it would've been a nasty surprise. And it also doesn't seem like something the Artists Guild would come up with."
     "Someone put them up to it?" I offered.
     "That's a way of phrasing it," she said. "I'll visit the embassy. Their attorneys will know the local Guild legislation. Learning how we're supposed to react to this might tell us more about who instigated it."
     "And we go see the chemists, a?" Chaeitch said.
     "A. And it's probably best you don't mention this to anyone. The last we need is all the other Guilds Mikah has provided knowledge to claiming he's an asset of theirs."

The Chemists Guild hall and workshops were as advertised. They were in an industrial area, near a tannery and felt factory which gave the air an interesting... texture. The compound consisted of an admittedly elegant old stone and slate building used for their administration, as well as a range of other constructions around the rear yard used for work. Those were a variety of constructs from rickety clapboard sheds to more robust brick workshops. And all the interiors were cluttered and imbued with an extensive and eyewatering variety of smells.
     Those were where bulk substances required by other industries were produced. There were smaller, more orderly labs where they carried out research and more precise work. The Rris who worked there were an odd breed. They tended to move carefully and thoughtfully. They had frizzy patches of fur and, despite wearing fusty finery, certainly carried a unique chemical tang about them.
     They weren't lightweights in their industry. They were scholars and, while they weren't alchemists, they weren't precisely chemists as defined back home. Ur-chemists perhaps. What I found remarkable about them was that although there were the initial reluctances, once they realized that I knew a few things they didn't, any prejudices fell aside amazingly quickly. They were authentic chemistry geeks.
     And it was the chemistry that was a problem. To start with, I'm in no way an expert. And translating what various substances were across the language gap didn't make things any easier. Vanadium steel? Sure, just add vanadium to steel. And what exactly is that when it's at home? What does it look like? Where is it found outside of a dictionary? Would the atomic number help?
     Yes, the Rris had a periodic table. Well, the beginnings of one. They'd grouped known materials according to properties: solid, gas, metals, nonmetals, density, reactivity. This was apparently in a state of continuous flux as different Guild branches or members bickered about what should go where. So, it wasn't a comprehensive or — by my standards — accurate chart, but it was a start.
     However, that still didn't help with the naming issue. Describing something like gold wasn't difficult, but something like zinc was tougher, and gallium could be mistaken for mercury, and platinum was harder still. And there were whole sections of the periodic table that just didn't exist as isolated elements in nature: it would require electrolysis or liquefaction or fractional distillation to produce a sample. The discussion to compare what they knew with the information I had would take a lot longer than the few hours we had.
     And when they understood that even my extremely limited knowledge contained fundamental insights they didn't have, they were exceedingly eager to get that time. The suggestion of standardized measurements were met with enthusiastic noises and promises of prompt adoption, if we could only explain a little more about the construction of these atoms.
     They were also some of the only Rris we'd met who actually enquired what these standardizations were based on. And once the details had been explained to them, completely agreed with the reasoning behind it.
     "We'd heard talk of new techniques in metallurgy," the nominated spokesman said to Chaeitch. "In fact, a few months ago we had a message from our hall in Hill of Yellow Flowers. They'd been asked about the availability and practicality of using chromium in steel production and wanted some information from our libraries on the subject. All our sources said it's too brittle, but they seemed to think it is possible."
     Their spokesman was actually a she. Skinny, but tall, and with a wild ruff of spiky fur around her neck that was almost like a short mane. Her offices carried more than a few traces of that character: cluttered with books and charts and odd diagrams and benches laden with jars of various substances. She regarded us expectantly.
     "Are you familiar with this?"
     "Uh," I nodded and then looked at Chaeitch and our Mediator. They didn't seem about to mention that Land-of-Water was already working on that. "We could... look into that?" I suggested.
     "With the Guilds permission," he said.
     "Of course," she acknowledged.
     Interesting that they should have been enquiring about that at about the same time Smither Industries had been experimenting with stainless steel. Industrial espionage was alive and kicking, but she didn't seem to realize that, or even consider it.
     And that did ask that old question, 'who owns this knowledge?'
     Stainless steel — as an example — had countless applications. Everything back home used it, from medical to military. Now, suppose someone controlled the manufacturing of that, either through patent, secrecy, or Guild law? And of aluminum. And vanadium steel. And gasoline. And rubber.
     There was a chance it could be balanced out into a network of interdependencies, but it was more likely there would be issues of various degrees.
     And I kept seeing the time coming when I'd have to face another huge problem related to that square one. It was going to be something a lot of people weren't going to like at all. Perhaps I could figure out a way around it. Perhaps. But for the time being the Guilds were a fact of life.
     We talked with the chemists. We toured their works. I answered what questions the Mediators let me. I also gave them a few snippets that filled in gaps in their information. Nothing that would cause any serious disruptions, but some tips about atomic theory that would keep them busy filling in the gaps for a while. And incidentally helped serve as proof of my bona fides.
     This was going to be important. And it was going to be a problem. Chemistry was a vital part of what we were doing. As the Guild already knew, metallurgy was a vital part in any industrial society. You couldn't make a railway out of cast iron. You couldn't make a skyscraper using iron girders. Tool bits needed to be harder than the material they were cutting. Efficient batteries would be vitally important. Synthetics and chemicals and drugs and medications would all require competent and reliable methodologies to create and develop. All would be reliant on knowledge that at the time only the Chemists Guild was party to.
     Important. Even though the guild seemed to be treated as something of a side-show of bad smells and eccentricity, they were eventually going to have to step into the main ring. And we'd have to help them do that, to get up to speed, and do it without ruffling feathers by handing them everything on a plate.
     Too many hours later I sat in the back of the cold carriage. The sun was low. I smelled of weird chemicals. I had a sore throat. I had a caustic aftertaste in my mouth. I had a pair of Rris sitting opposite and watching me.
     "What is your opinion?" Chaeitch asked. "A successful day? What do you think?"
     "I think I need a drink," I grated.
     "Ah," he realized. "Huh. Apologies. That went on for longer than expected. We could stop for a... "
     "No," Jenes'ahn said.
     He huffed. "No. Of course no. Rot." Then he leaned forward and reached inside his coat. Produced a small silver flask. "Was saving this. Here."
     I caught it. Sloshed it.
     "That might help," he said.
     Popped the top and sniffed. There was a hint of apple in there.
     "He shouldn't be drinking," Jenes'ahn started to protest.
     I shrugged. "Kanpai," I took a swig. Winced. Took another. It was brandy. Warm and cold at the same time. More importantly it was wet.
     Jenes'ahn hissed. "That's enough."
     "If you insist," I re-stoppered the flask and offered it to her. "Still enough for you."
     Ears went back. "I am on duty!"
     "So am I," I said.
     "Not the same."
     "Really? You were behind me all day. You are thirsty. You're afraid to drink after me?"
     A twitch. A glare. Then she grabbed the flask and knocked back a swig. "Rot," she gasped. Inhaled again. "Rot. Why this?"
     Chaeitch waved a shrug. "Can be useful in negotiations. Both a hearth offering and to loose the tongue."
     "Chaeitch," I said. "You might have a drinking problem."
     He snorted and took the flask back. "Nonsense! I've never had any problem drinking."
     "Not entirely what I meant."
     "A? It's also excellent preparation for moments like your next meeting."
     I ran through a mental itinerary. "I wasn't aware there was one."
     "A messenger turned up while you were engaged. A hasty thing due to the upcoming quorum. A reception and meal with his lordship and guests this evening."
     "Oh. Good."
     He huffed air. "Don't be like that. There'll be good food and drink."
     "And more talking."
     "Well... yes. Most likely," he said. He looked at the flask in his hand. Shook it. Considered. Offered it back to me. "This might help."

Lamps burned throughout the palace. They were torches and braziers; oil lamps and gas lamps. The light they threw out was feeble by modern standards, but in the entry hall metal and marble blazed where the light stroked them. Guards in their polished armor and peacetied weapons were visible through the halls. Especially near my quarters.
     "His lordship offers regrets that you weren't notified of this earlier, sir," Hedia was saying as she trailed into my quarters with Rraerch and Jenes'ahn in tow.
     "This is irregular," Rraerch said. "There is a schedule."
     Staff materialized to help take my coat and boots.
     "We understand. This happened quite suddenly."
     "It relates to the quorum?"
     "Yes, Ma'am. His lordship feels it expedient to keep the petitioners informed. And affable."
     I headed for the drawing room and the Rris tailed behind. There were trays there, with platers with miniature kebabs arrayed on them. I sat wearily, gestured to the others to do so.
     "So," Rraerch said, "his lordship intends this to be... a what?"
     "A simple reception and meal, Ma'am," Hedia said. "A meal at which the guests can speak with ah Rihey in a less formal manner."
     "And the guests are... ?"
     "Local Guild leaders, Ma'am."
     "They have doubts about me," I guessed.
     And didn't hit too far from the mark. Hedia hesitated. "There are feelings that your meetings may have been... orchestrated."
     "You think?" I asked, a little incredulously. "And why would they think differently about this?"
     "Short notice," she said. "A more informal setting. No set agenda. And," she took a breath, "the invitation is extended to you and her ladyship alone. Not your Land-of-Water sponsors, I'm afraid."
     "What? Wait. Just me and Chihirae?" I interrupted. "Did you ask her?"
     "She was invited. She has agreed," Rraerch said smoothly.
     "Uh-huh," I looked around again. How much choice had she had? "Her and I, but noone else?"
     "People want to meet her," Rraerch continued. "She is interesting."
     "She is a teacher."
     "Who is a confidant and intimate partner of someone who has entire kingdoms restless. I apologize, but it is a known fact."
     "That shouldn't..."
     "And she is far more likely to let slip candid facts about you," Jenes'ahn calmly interjected.
     I stopped. Gave her a hard look. But she was right. "So, they think she might say something you wouldn't?"
     The Mediator's muzzle creased. "I believe they may think she may provide an unsophisticated view on you and your reasons for being here."
     "Trying to find the fly in the fondue, a?"
     "Essentially, yes."
     "It's understandable, sir," Hedia offered. "People want to be as sure as they can before committing to anything. Does that make sense to you?"
     "Yes. Yes, that makes sense." I looked to Rraerch. "You know, if they have questions I can show them the laptop. That has a way of convincing sceptics."
     "You know that's not possible," Jenes'ahn said. "It shows too much."
     "So we have to convince them without proof?"
     "A. And under Guild Constraints. And without Land-of-Water presence."
     "This is a considerable request," Rraerch said quietly.
     "We are aware. There was hope you would be amenable for this night."
     "Of course the Guild will be present?"
     "Of course."
     "Mikah? Are you willing?"
     "You are the expert. Should I be?"
     "The Mediator Guild will be present. I think I would request a couple more officers. And our own guards outside."
     Hedia considered, then waved affirmative. "This is acceptable."
     "Then, Mikah, I think it would be diplomatic to agree."
     I sighed, resignedly and looked at slightly anxious faces. "I'll have time to get cleaned up? I smell like a chemistry set."
     "Of course, sir," said Hedia, climbing to her feet. "However, time is short, so clothes have been laid out. Yeircaez and staff are available to help you groom."
     Rraerch also stood. "I'll inform the others. Talk to the guards. Mikah... you can behave, a?"
     "I'll try."
     She hesitated, then gave a little huff and stalked off.
     I looked at Jenes'ahn. "What about you? Don't you need to polish your sword?"
     The expression she returned was one that glistened in the lamplight. "Oh, I'm not going anywhere."

Steaming hot water hammered down. Chemical smoke and dust and a day's crud sluiced away. Knotted muscles started to unwind. I closed my eyes and tipped my head back to the deluge.
     Which shut off with a gurgle, a clang and rattle of pipes.
     "Time enough," Jenes'ahn said from just outside the shower.
     I glared and dripped. "What do you think you're doing?"
     "Time is short. His lordship will be waiting; Guests will be waiting; Your staff are waiting."
     "Mikah?" another voice ventured from the door.
     "And so is her ladyship," Jenes'ahn added.
     I favored her with another glare and grabbed a towel on the way past. Chihirae was there. Alone. And glittering again: gold and jewels and another dress cut in a fashion that wasn't entirely Rris. Dark blue , with dark lace around the neck and shoulders and the kneelength skirt. The jewelry burned against it. "You look good," I said.
     "And you look wet," she retorted. "Come along, will you? You have to get dressed, get that mane groomed. I don't want to be seen with some mangy rat-catcher."
     Jenes'ahn stalked in, head swinging. "Where," she asked, "are the staff?"
     "I dismissed them," Chihirae said simply.
     "Was that prudent? Time is short."
     "Really? People are likely to leave if he is a few minutes late? Constable, I can deal with this shaved bear faster than they. I've had practice."
     The mediator's head went back a bit, like a dog regarding an aggressive mouse. "Very well," she said. "In your hands then."
     Then she leaned back against a wall, crossed her arms, and watched.
     The clothing was laid out and ready and as gaudy as I might have expected. First were forest-green dress pants with silver piping and a polished belt. Then Chihirae had her grooming kit out and told me to sit in front of her in the lamplight, a towel around my shoulders while she went to work. Claws poked me here and there, making me tip my head while she raked my hair back, teased my beard out, trimmed and snipped and brushed.
     "What've they told you about tonight?" I asked quietly.
     "Not much," Chihirae said. "They want to talk to you. Perhaps to me. I should answer what they ask, but not too much. Be the slow child in the class."
     "They said that?"
     "I inferred."
     "Oh."
     "And they want me to keep you under control."
     "Sounds difficult. Can you do that?"
     A tug on my hair. "You will behave yourself? Or I will I have to bite you."
     "Promises, promises... Ow! Alright! I will behave, but do I have to wear this?"
     "What's wrong with it?"
     "Green. So much green. I'll look like a walking bush."
     "Nonsense. You'll look respectable. Well, you will if you'll hold still so I can trim this foliage."
     "Funny."
     "A."
     "You look good though."
     "You think so?"
     "I think so."
     "Thank you."
     "Chi, tonight... you're willing to do this tonight?"
     A pause. "A."
     "When they asked, they gave you a choice?"
     "What? Oh, yes. Yes they did."
     As my hair and beard dried experienced hands tweaked it into something that, while squinting and in a poor light, might be considered a facsimile of a Rris on a bad hair day. Then came the white shirt and a quilted pale-blue waistcoat that was unnaturally heavy. I looked at the Mediator.
     "Wear it," she said.
     It was weighty, a couple of kilos, but not too bulky. I had a fair idea what was under that blue quilting. Had they offered Chihirae body armor? Judging by the furry curves under that eveningwear I'd guess not.
     Then there was the matching formal tunic with more silver frogging to shrug into, the polished leather boots to pull on, and the middle-school Robin Hood costume was complete. I stood while Chihirae fussed details into place. Green to her blue. Land-of-Water colors. A not-so-subtle statement.
     "Ready, I think, Constable," Chihirae said. "Quick enough?"
     "Good enough," Jenes'ahn said and pushed off from her vantage point, stalked to the door and. "Now we go."
     "Rraerch and the others..." I started to say.
     "Not them," she reminded me. "Just you and Guild. Come on."
     We went.

Armed guards lined the halls around the reception.
     There were Bluebetter Palace troops in their gleaming polish and sharpness. They outnumbered the others, the ones in the varied livery and armor of guilds and notable establishments. Some of them were watching us, but others, I noticed, were more interested in the reactions of their counterparts. Their uniforms ranged from gaudy silver extravagance to dark and businesslike leather armor, some etched with scars from use. Weapons were visible. They were daggers and they were peace-tied, but they were there.
     Hedia was leading the way. Jenes'ahn behind. Chihirae walked the halls beside me, the fur of her arm occasionally brushing against me. She was trying to put on a brave face, but I knew that stance: the prick of the ears and twitch in the sweep of her tail. I bumped my arm against her and she looked around, up at me, then returned the gesture. I think she relaxed a little.
     The grizzled Rohinia and another Mediator met us. Their worn Guild gray was out of place there, but it certainly distinguished them. As did their multiple firearms and blades, none of them peace-tied. Rohinia just nodded at Jenes'ahn who gave me one last look, then turned and retreated back the way we'd come. End of her shift. Rohinia led us onwards.
     Bluebetter guards at the high double-doors opened them for us without hesitation. Through into an antechamber lined with padded grey upholstery studded with gold buttons. The doors behind us closed.
     "Mikah," Rohinia growled sotto voce beside me. "If they bait you, don't bite. Remember that."
     The doors in front opened.
     It wasn't a ballroom this time. Nor a vast, echoing banquet room or a majestic hall. It was a dining room. Granted, it was a large one. Granted, the walls were polished oak and rosewood and carved with inhuman geometries and hung with paintings of ancient Rris and places, but it was a dining room.
     Heavy drapes in earthy tones hung over windows. Fire burned in a pair of fireplaces, one at each end of the room. High above, on the peripheries of where the lamplight could reach, the ceiling was broken into a patchwork of frescoes. What I could see hinted at broken Rris and burning fortresses and rolling battlefields. And of course there was a table. Or two, too be accurate. A rectangular head table and adjacent to that, a space separating them, and another, longer horseshoe-shaped one. Tiered candelabras blazed, the candles raising a haze of smoke and heat over the tables. Tableware glinted white and silver in the light.
     Guests were already seated. A background static of conversation cut off. Heads had turned and eyeshine flashed as heads tracked us. Rohinia and the other constable faded into the background as Chihirae and I were shown to our places.
     We were shown to the end table, seated to the right of the Bluebetter king, with Chihirae between us. Hmm, was that honoring her? More likely for the safety of his lordship — she was deemed less of a potential threat. Or, for her safety? She'd been at a meeting with me like this before. Someone had shot at her. She still had pellet scars under her fur from that encounter.
     Surely nothing like that would happen here? I was beginning to regret not wearing my winter coat.
     We settled on the cushions at the low tables, seated at places set with finger bowls and small, square porcelain plates. I adjusted myself: the armored waistcoat didn't flex well and dug into awkward places. Given a second to look around I counted twenty-two heads gathered there, most of them looking back at me. Different ages and builds. Genders were hard to tell. Some were in light tunics or shirts or vests, others just their winter pelts with the odd smattering of jewelry. I wondered at that, then realized it was warm enough for me in there. Maybe too-warm for most of them.
     "Thank you Ah Rihey and Aesh Hiasamra'thsi," Chita ah Thes'ita said to us, then announced to the table. "Our guests and the Land-of-Water embassy have been good enough to agree to this somewhat unscheduled affair. Land-of-Water people are not present tonight, so your questions will be directly to Ah Rihey or Aesh Hiasamra'thsi. The mediator Guild does have representatives present, so I would ask you to mind their strictures."
     Around the table the inhuman faces were watching us. Me.
     Back in another world, when seated at a table facing another species of client, I could gauge the mood of the room with a glance. The body language, the almost-infinitesimal tells in the faces. My brain was wired to read them. Faced with the inhuman those instincts didn't work. They failed. They might even be detrimental, miss-interpreting important cues. To glean some clues to someone's mood I had to study carefully, weigh and evaluate and judge from experience. And that scrutiny often precipitated a rapid attitude change in the subject.
     That night there were too many for that. I saw ears twitched back. I saw glances at other members around the table; stiffening of postures; tilting of heads; muzzles wrinkling; fingers twitching; tongues flicking. Too many to take in, save for one:
     Fur as white as snow in the candlelight. Blue eyes. Chieth. Why was she there?
     And they were waiting for something. Oh.
     "Thank you for the invitation, sir," I said to the Bluebetter King, to the watching faces. "I hope I am able to be of some assistance. Within the Guild's instructions, of course."
     "Of course," ah Thes'ita said. "This isn't intended to be a continuation of your commercial discussions. Given the forthcoming quorum, these honoreds are gathered to gain more of an understanding of you. Not what your associates have told them, but what you can tell them. Is that satisfactory?"
     "It is, sir."
     "You have met with most of these people before, but I understand you have some difficulties with putting names to faces."
     "That is... yes, sir."
     "That will not be a concern. This is about you, not them. They have questions and all you have to do is answer. I, however, do know who they are and I expect tonight to pass with a level of decorum."
     Anonymity, he meant. No names, no repercussions for what they might say. But his caution seemed to carry some weight: ears laid back but no mouths opened.
     "Very well. I can live with that," I said.
     "Excellent," his lordship said, waved a finger. Staff appeared with trays and circled the table. Dishes were placed. Drinks were poured. Water and wine and something else set before me. A waiter used tongs to laid out small strips and cuts of roast meat, pieces of bread, pate and cheese on the plates in front of me. Small bowls stamped with blue and green emblems were set down. Bowls set before others, including Chihirae, weren't so marked. She lifted the lid on one of her's.
     "Berry compote with poppy seed," she said to me. "Not good for you."
     "Your dishes are safe for you, ah Rihey," ah Thes'ita said to me as the staff finished and filed out again. "Your cook recommended them. Please, feel free to eat as we proceed. Who is first?"
     A Rris to my left leaned forward, clicked something small and white with red markings down on the table. A little ceramic token that looked a bit like a mahjong tile. "That would be I, sir," that one said. Male, I thought. Older fellow, light vest, gold armlet around one bicep, but beyond that I couldn't put a name to the face.
     "Nobody has been able to provide an accurate account of how you came to Rris lands. There is talk you are from over the sea, but you are found in Land-of-Water. In the center of Land-of-Water. That is not close to the sea. And from what I've heard, you didn't approach the locals, but rather were captured. You claim to not have any [agenda] here, but that sounds like you were trying to hide."
     Okay, that again. "Because I was," I said. "I had no choice in coming here. No choice in any of it. I am not from over the sea. I am not from any lands anywhere here. I know I was in my world. Then something happened. I woke up in the forest in Land-of-Water."
     "That makes no sense," the Rris said. Not angrily, just saying.
     "Then the truth is I don't know how I came here."
     "You say 'your world'. The moon? One of the other planets?"
     "No. This one. Continents are the same. Air is the same. Most of the same animals. The main difference is my kind and Rris."
     "How can that be?"
     And that precipitated the talk about the multiverse theory; about the tree of time and decision branches and the overlapping leaves of worlds and realities. And at the end of that most of them were staring.
     "That is your answer?"
     "It is the only answer I know that best suits the situation," I said. "Unless I went mad and this is all in my head. All I know is I woke in the forest. I walked for days. I was running out of food, so was relieved when I found a small town. I went in there expecting my own kind. To find Rris... that scared me more than I can say.
     "So, I hid. I hid and I watched and tried to understand what was going on. I ran out of food. I had to steal. When winter came I found a winter school was being taught. I hid and watched them and learned some words. Until... she caught me." I nodded toward Chihirae.
     "That's a long story short."
     Rris eyes flashed as they appraised me, Chihirae. But there were no interruptions.
     "Aesh Hiasamra'thsi, would you corroborate this?" the Rris asked.
     "As much as I can, sir," Chihirae said. "I know there were stories of something in the woods around Westwater when I got there. Food was missing from smokehouses, strange prints and such. I know I was sure of it when a book was stolen, then returned. I set a trap. I nearly killed him. That was when I first actually met him."
     "You believe his story?"
     "A. I do."
     "Is there a good reason?"
     "If he was sent as an agent, he is a terrible one."
     The other Rris huffed, considered, then reached out to turn that little white tile facedown with another click. There was a Rris numeral on it: 1.
     Another click from across the way as another Rris set a tile down. They'd drawn lots? I thought they'd said it wasn't going to be a formal discussion. Someone had probably realized an open forum would devolve into chaos.
     "When people set out to change other people's minds it usually ends with that one gaining a good mouthful of the profits. Why are you any different?"
     I nodded, picked up a strip of meat and nibbled. "Okay. Perhaps not so different. I do want some profit: better way of living, food, warmth, all that. But I think that these changes can bring that to everyone."
     "Some take. Others lose. Always works that way."
     "Ah. You are thinking that there is only so much of the pie to go around. If someone takes a big slice, others get smaller slices, correct?"
     "That is a given."
     "And what if you could make the pie bigger? What if you increase value across the board? Workers produce more. Goods are cheaper to produce, to ship. More money comes into circulation."
     "Good for everyone?" the derisive tone was evident. "Some always lose out."
     "Yes. Some will have less than others, but because there is more to go around they will still have more than they do now. And being wealthier will make them more productive. I know some of you manufacture goods. Would cheaper costs and more customers be attractive?"
     That made a few ears twitch.
     "And it is all good for all?"
     "I've never been able to promise that, but I believe it would be beneficial to most."
     "Huhn," the petitioner settled, frowned, clicked the card over.
     The next one: "Why do you feel that your measurements units are superior to the current methods? They've worked for centuries. Why change them?"
     "A. And do you recall what they are based on? What those measurements mean?"
     A hesitation. "Not immediately, no."
     "Nobody seems to. And different areas have different measurements. They might be based on the width of someone's hand from five hundred years ago. Or the length of their stride, or handspan, or tail. Nobody knows. So there's no set standard for that measure, and it has doubtless drifted considerably in that time.
     "The system we have proposed is based on common items. It can be reproduced even if there isn't an item to copy from. Hundreds of years from now the measures should be the same. And that means the measures should be the same for everyone. If you order a barrelweight of grain from Seas-of-Grass what you will receive will be what you expect; If a device built here needs some replacement parts in Open Fields, the parts will use the same measurements; goods coming through several ports will be measured using the same systems so there'll be fewer 'rounding errors'. For example."
     "You think we couldn't fix those issues on our own?"
     "You did," I said. "Aesh Smither asked me what I thought would be a serious impediment to some of your programs and this was one of the worst I could think of. Ah Ties was the one with the solution."
     Not entirely accurate, but it was the short version and seemed to satisfy the questioner. I sipped water. Rris stared.
     Click.
     "Do you claim to be able to predict the future?"
     What am I going to have for dinner tomorrow? That misguided question came back to me.
     "No. Absolutely not," I said. "I know about things. I know about machines and science and knowledge. I have information about how things work and how to build a machine to harvest grain, but I don't have any idea if it will be a good year, or if there will be a drought or a flood. Or what you will do with that machine. Or how the increase in the amount of grain will affect your business. That is up to you."
     "But you know the affect these changes will have on people."
     "Again: no. I don't. I try to... anticipate how they will change things, but I'm not good at that. I can't think in the same way you do. That is a reason the Mediator Guild is involved. They assist with that — they try to see when those changes will be... not for the better."
     "You believe they can do this?"
     "Not entirely. No. But possibly better than I can."
     A pause, then the Rris said, "Thank you, ah Rihey."
     Click.
     "How many people have you killed?"
     I sat and stared blankly at the Rris like an idiot for a few seconds until the question registered. Eyeshine glowed back. Calm, composed. Or I was just unable to read anything else. Of course it was a loaded question. Trolling me. Trying to get some sort of rise.
     I blinked, considered. "I'm not really sure."
     "That many?"
     "Well, there were the ones who attacked me and did this," I touched the starburst scar on my cheek where my face had been torn open. "And the ones who attacked me in Shattered Water. And the ones who abducted Chihirae." I held up my truncated finger, "And the one who was responsible for that. And..."
     "Mikah," Chihirae interrupted me quietly. "Enough."
     Then the Rris king tapped a clawtip on the table. "Sir, was there a reason for that question?"
     "A reason?" The eyeshine winked out as the Rris shifted his attention. "Huh, I was curious. And I thought others might want to know what they're dealing with."
     What, not who.
     He continued: "Do you know what you are dealing with, ma'am?"
     I tensed. It was an attack. Just words at the moment, but there was hostility there.
     "Do you?" Chihirae returned. She was bristling. It was bait. And it wasn't just an attack against me, he was trying to bait her too, and she was responding. In defense of me, but it was still what he wanted. "I know I'm dealing with someone who has risked his own life for others more than a few times. What have you done lately?"
     That was her school room voice. Speaking to him like an insolent cub.
     "I haven't murdered an inn of innocents."
     "Were you there? I was and know he did nothing of the sort. You might want to talk to those who employed the murderers?"
     "Chi," I gently said. "Not worth it."
     She snorted, subsided.
     I turned back to the other Rris, as annoyed as hell and the other Rris' muzzle flinched, wrinkled back as he looked about to say something else. Then his expression changed and he shut up, ears going back. Perhaps some of my expressions could be read by Rris.
     "Thank you, Aesh Hiasamra'thsi," his lordship said. "That was very emphatic."
     "I apologize, sir," she said.
     "I don't think so. You spoke with conviction."
     She hesitated, looked at lords and ladies and movers and shakers and one out-of-place princess. "I know him, sir."
     "That well?"
     "Better than anyone else at this table."
     "Huhn," he growled, thoughtfully. Then waved acknowledgment. "That is probably the case. Now, continue."
     Click.
     "Why do you choose to stay with Land-of-Water?"
     "Hmmm... I have to say it isn't a political or financial decision. I haven't seen a great deal of the rest of your world — just a few cities and their harbors. And now I have... acquaintances there who are somewhat used to me. So it is a place I am most familiar with where I have been able to make a place that is vaguely similar to my home."
     "So you may be willing to consider relocating?"
     "That is difficult to answer," I said. "I think I would be reluctant to do so. if I did it once, then the offers or demands would never stop."
     The Rris chewed on a piece of jerky, considering. Then reached for the chit.
     Click.
     "Aesh Hiasamra'thsi," the next said. "A question for you."
     Chihirae stiffened. "Huhn. Hahn, yes, Ma'am?"
     She was an older Rris. Solid. Golden earrings and green satin vest. "As his lordship has observed, you seem to know this visitor better than most. Can you explain why we should trust him?"
     Chihirae looked at me, at the faces.
     They were asking her because they could read her, I realized. They didn't trust me; they couldn't read me or manipulate me in the ways they might another of their kind. So, they picked someone they could.
     "Ma'am," Chihirae said. "I really don't believe he has ever had any intention of deceiving anyone. I don't think he's ever lied to us."
     "There are so many conflicting things about him. How can you be sure what's true?"
     "I am afraid I don't know what you've heard. All I can say is that he has never been anything but good to me. What has he told you?"
     The Rris smiled, just an amused expression. "You're sure that everything he's told you is the truth?"
     "Ma'am, I was... I am still his teacher. I knew him before he could speak our words. I've taught him what I can about us, and he has taught me about himself. There are things about his home I don't understand. Sometimes he does things that are... peculiar. Or does things for reasons that make sense to him; or when he thinks they are what a normal person would do. He makes mistakes and misunderstandings, a, but outright dishonesty? No, that is not him."
     "You are not afraid of him?"
     "'Afraid of him'?" Chihirae echoed thoughtfully. She nibbled at a small roll and then chittered. "Now, that is a familiar question."
     "Are you?"
     "Why should I be afraid of him? He has never tried to harm me. He has helped me. I trust him. No, I've found other people are more dangerous."
     "But..." the other started to say and his lordship leaned forward. "Enough, I think. Others are waiting."
     She seemed about ready to retort, then stiffly but politely inclined her head and turned her chit over.
     Click.
     "Is there really a good reason for the Mediator Guild's censoring on your knowledge?"
     Not a terrible question, even though I thought it was one the Guild itself would have dealt with many times. I answered anyway.
     There were a few more of the usual questions and only once did a Mediator have to step forward and delicately suggest that that line of questioning was steering close to dangerous waters.
     Then came one that was dangerous for all the wrong reasons.
     "Aesh Hiasamra'thsi, you have sex with him, don't you? Out of season?"
     I almost choked on my entrée. I looked to Chihirae, who appeared entirely unconcerned, back to the questioner — a slim, androgynous Rris in a linen tunic of browns and greens. Amber eyes were fixed on me, not her, and that person seemed very calm. And incidentally was sitting beside that blue-eyed northern princess.
     "Umm," I ventured, "is that question necessary?"
     "I believe so," that person said and now turned to the Bluebetter King. "Sir, it's been asked before, but never with a satisfactory answer. This is a little curious. Aesh Hiasamra'thsi, I ask again."
     "You don't have to..." I started to say to Chihirae, but she tapped my leg. "Mikah."
     I subsided.
     "He seems reluctant," the petitioner noted.
     "A," Chihirae said. "It is not something he feels comfortable discussing openly."
     "Why?"
     Chihirae waved a shrug. "It's the way he is, Ma'am. He seems to find it embarrassing, for reasons that seem to have to do with how his mind works. How would you feel about being shaved? Or singing the Fool's poems in a market square? Distasteful?"
     A tip of the hand.
     "It is like that for him."
     "But you do couple with him."
     A chilly, "Yes, Ma'am."
     Barely a flicker from around the table. Perhaps an ear twitch here or there, but otherwise, nothing. It was old news. And it wasn't something that Rris got their kicks from. It still made my neck prickle.
     "Why? I mean, there will be no issue from such a union, it doesn't look like a normal person, and it's quite brutish. More than a few call it a beast."
     "Come on," I said, "she's not that bad. A bit hairy, but no-one's perfect."
     Silence for a second, then some Rris snickers from around the table. Our interrogator looked momentarily confused, then cocked her head. "Was that a joke?"
     "I believe so," Chihirae said, touching my leg again. "He can surprise you like that. You insult him and instead of pulling your head off he makes a joke."
     "Huhn," the other flinched a bit, then looked pointedly thoughtful. "But my question remains: why do you chose to stay with him? Is there a reason for it? You can't be [infatuated?/owing?/obligation?] with this one?""
     "It... can't work like that," Chihirae said.
     "Then why do you stay? You have an obligation? Guild Orders?"
     "Nothing like that. He is a friend and it helps him. He has bad dreams. Nightmares. Just like a real person. And I know it helps him to have someone he knows near. It stops him screaming in the night."
     "Huhn? What would something like him have nightmares about?"
     "Rris, usually," I said and there was a cascade of twitches around the table. "There have been moments since I came here that have not been... pleasant."
     "I am sorry to hear that," she said. "You value her."
     That was an odd question. I hesitated, surrounded by watching faces. "She's a friend. So I would say yes, I value her. She stays, and I value her for that, but she is free to do as she chooses."
     "Huhn, you are sure of that?"
     "What do you mean?"
     "If the Guild knew she was valuable to you, they may insist she stay with you. Would you know if they had?"
     "I stay because I choose to," Chihirae interjected, sound annoyed. "As I said, he is a friend. He needs help; I help him. He needs a teacher; I teach him. I guide him and show him how to behave like a person. And as for the sex... well, there is an excellent reason for that."
     "And that is?"
     She leaned forward, "The reason is, you see, is because he really is very good at it."
     That seemed to surprise her. There was a hesitation, then: "What do you mean?" "Have you ever felt as if your whole body had sneezed? Like every muscle had been stretched to treacle? Felt like a raincloud that'd been wrung dry? Like you were basking in sunlight? Like you'd just run a thousand miles without moving?"
     "What?" She looked startled, looked at me, eyes calculating. "No."
     "Huhn, then I doubt you'd understand."
     "You..."
     "Enough," his lordship rumbled, a growl loud enough to carry. "That's more than enough time, I think. Next."
     The Rris stared at me, then huffed and reached for the chit.
     Click.
     The next fellow leaned forward. "How would you define your relationship with Landof-Water?"

The steward was waiting in the foyer as we walked in the door. "Sir," she greeted me.
     Bowed to Chihirae, "Ma'am. Good evening."
     "Good evening, Yeircaez," I said. "All quiet?"
     "Yes, sir. I trust you had a productive time?"
     "Six hours of my life I'm not getting back."
     "Ahh, yes, sir. Quite. Is there anything you require?"
     There'd been enough finger-food that night, but we hadn't had much time to eat. "Is there any food available?"
     "Your cook prepared some sandwiches in case. Will those suffice?"
     "They would be most welcome," I said. "And a drink."
     "I will have them brought to you, sir. Ma'am." She bowed and retreated.
     Chihirae was watching me, looking amused. "That was an interesting evening."
     "Really?" I led the way through to the parlor, fiddling with the buttons on the tunic to loosen the collar and the damn ballistic waistcoat underneath. "You know that was very embarrassing."
     Chihirae chittered. "I think you did well. Even with that... provocation."
     "And I thought you were supposed to be the slow child in class."
     "There are some things I will not stand for in class. And that, Constable, that seemed a bit personal."
     "A," Rohinia said from where he'd returned from checking the other rooms. "The questions... they were trying to provoke you."
     "I think they succeeded," I muttered.
     "They have difficulty understanding Mikah, so they targeted you, teacher. You they can understand. It was easier for them to tell if they were getting truthful answers from you."
     "I see," Chihirae growled, her muzzle crinkling a little. "That... makes sense."
     "I wasn't expecting to see Chieth there," I said. She hadn't asked anything. She'd just... watched. And listened.
     "The northern guest?" Rohinia said. "A. That was interesting."
     "Interesting? The 'that's an interesting tree' interesting? Or the 'that's an interesting cannon with a smoking fuse pointing straight at me' interesting?"
     He considered. "Yes."
     "Glad we cleared that up," I said. "If she was wanting more attention from home, she's going to get it."
     "You have talked with her, haven't you."
     "A. And I really think she's a great deal more capable than she lets on. Must be the eyes."
     "Huhn," he grunted and stroked his chin, considered. "As I said, 'interesting'. I will take my leave now. There's paperwork to do. There will be a constable outside your door."
     After he was gone I said, "That makes me feel so much safer."
     "Mikah," Chihirae hissed.
     I sighed and fumbled in my pocket. "I don't know why, but those questions... they felt quite deliberate. And not for the reasons he said."
     "They were trying to upset you?"
     "They why didn't they ask me about our relationship? I would find that embarrassing. I might not have reacted as well as you did. So, if they were after a reaction, why ask you?"
     She looked confused. "They wanted to find out if you were trustworthy. If you were imposing on me. As the Constable said, it was easier to understand my reaction."
     "I suppose so," I said and didn't press. It didn't feel right, but I didn't need to upset her. "And thank you."
     "For what?"
     "Your... indignation. I think you defended me better than I could have without looking angry."
     "Which was what they wanted," she chittered, then caught my look. "Rot, Mikah, you didn't notice? They were like cubs goading another to do something just to get it into trouble."
     I had to laugh. "I think you have more experience with that than I do.""
     "Some of them never grow out of it," she said and chittered again. Then she caught my look and her ears twitched back. "What?"
     "You handled it well."
     "Huhn. A. Don't have to like it, though. Cub games. They should know better."
     "Apparently they didn't have a good teacher," I grinned as Yeircaez returned.
     "Your sandwiches, sir," she said as a servant brought in a covered tray, set it on the table and retreated. "And ah Ties, sir. Will you receive him at this hour?"
     "Show him in."
     Chihirae had the cover off the dish and was munching a sandwich as Chaeitch was brought in. Yeircaez bowed and withdrew again.
     "Mikah," Chaeitch greeted me. "We didn't hear any tales of bloodshed, so we assumed it went well. Ah, food!"
     "Do they let you know when there's something to eat in here?" I asked, hastening to salvage a sandwich before they were demolished. Turkey and some kind of strong cheese? Not bad.
     "Just lucky," he mumbled through a mouthful. "It did go well, a?"
     "It went," I said. "You want the details? Here." I handed him my phone. He quickly slipped it into a pocket.
     Chihirae stared. "Mikah, what did you do?"
     "Recorded it," I said. "I've been thinking it might be a good idea to start doing that at these meetings. Stops disagreements about who said what."
     "A," Chaeitch said. "Very useful."
     "There were some odd questions asked in there," I said. "You might be able to figure out a reason better than I can."
     "We'll listen," he said. "It works the same way?"
     "A."
     "Good. We'll listen tonight. Best go before the Guild takes an interest. Mind if I... ?" he gestured to the food.
     "I don't think I could stop you," I said.
     He flashed a grinning parody of a smile back and grabbed another handful of food. "I'll leave you two then. Have a fun night," he said on the way out.
     "What's that mean?" I asked.
     "He probably thinks we're going to have sex," Chihirae offered.
     "Oh," I said, turned to find her standing too close, an amused expression on her face. "I was not aware. Are we?"
     "Well," she said, twiddled with the silver braid on the front of my tunic, "do you want to make a liar of me? After what I said tonight? I did extol your... virtues after all."
     Her dress was blue sateen and dark lace. It wasn't silk. It wasn't tight-fitting: with her winter pelt that didn't work, but it fitted well enough to show curves underneath. Not human curves though; and hair poked up around the laces at the edges; and Rris males wouldn't care about anything like that out of season. It was for style and show more than any entirely practical reason. But she knew I saw things a little differently and didn't complain when I ran a finger along her jaw. Scratched that place behind her ear and down her back.
     Found the clasps.
     The dress puddled around her ankles. The jewelry gleamed against her fur.
     "Huhn," she shivered under my hands, then growled over her shoulder. "Should you have done that? With your device, I mean? You stored all that talk?"
     "A," I said.
     "Why?"
     "They want to know what happened," I said, stroking down her flanks, gently scratching up and down ribs in long, slow strokes. "Telling would take all night."
     "Uhnn. You have something better to do?" she closed her eyes, growled again under exploring fingers. That first nipple was hardening. Then the next.
     "Well," I mused as I stroked and scratched. "You were serious today?"
     "About?" she smirked as she stretched into my attentions.
     "About? Oh, about rainclouds and sunlight and running a thousand miles? Something like that."
     "Perhaps," she growled, theatrically thoughtful. "Maybe exaggerating somewhat. I don't actually recall anything too extraordinary."
     "Oh? The world didn't move for you even a little bit?"
     "I don't think you're that good."
     "No?" I asked, then caught her up, lifting her off her feet. She squawked startlement, kicked, then went limp, laying back in my arms. "How about that?" I asked.
     "I think that's cheating," she chittered up at me and flicked her pink tongue around her mouth. "Now you've got me, what are you going to do with me?"
     "Oh, terrible things," I assured her. "Wicked things. Unspeakable things."
     "Such as?"
     "I cannot speak of them: they're unspeakable."
     "Hai, it sounds most depraved." She licked her chops again, blinked slowly. "When do we start?"

The meeting with the local artists Guild didn't go entirely to plan. Not to ours, anyway.
     As I'd been told, we met with them in the afternoon. The venue was the Artists Guild's hall. That wasn't situated in one of the more exclusive parts of the city, but rather in a more bohemian section not too far from the docks and downwind from a fish-packing warehouse. Another multi-hour carriage ride from the palace.
     The Guild hall was another compound of old buildings: a main hall that had once been an impressive three-story pseudo-Tudor façade. Narrow-but-tall lead-lighted windows faced out over a small snow-covered courtyard with a fountain in the center. Now hall looked decidedly time-worn and the statue in the fountain was missing a head. Flanking the courtyard on the other sides were brick and wood buildings that were decidedly less grand: stables downstairs and what were likely apprentice quarters upstairs.
     A Rris was waiting for us on the hall steps. Young, lean, hungry artist... he didn't resemble any of those things. Put him in a room with those bankers and, save for the somewhat threadbare green and purple and yellow paisley tunic under the tooled-leather tabard, he'd be nigh-indistinguishable.
     "Ah Tohaski," Hedia murmured. She'd accompanied us as his Lordship's representative. He was understandably wary about an unpleasant legal precedent being attempted on his territory. "Guild secretary."
     That ah Tohaski watched as we debarked from the carriages. So did a lot of others — I saw hairy faces at windows all around the court. Both the Mediators met us and fell in alongside, eyes and ears moving. Their hands were empty, but their coats hung open and iron and steel were holstered there.
     Chaeitch and Rraerch weren't as twitchy, but they still had their serious faces on as we followed Hedia up the steps.
     "Advisor," ah Tohaski greeted her, then to me: "Ah Rihey. We are glad you accepted our invitation. Ah Ties, aesh Smither, likewise."
     "Our pleasure, sir," Rraerch replied.
     Hedia inclined her head. "His lordship sends his regards and respects. As always he tries to accommodate Hall requests."
     "And we are appreciative," ah Tohaski replied.
     They'd briefed me on him. He was the face of the Artists Guild in Red Leaves. He was the one who did the hand shaking and official meetings. He had his own secretaries and functionaries, but he wasn't making the final decisions.
     "Please, come this way — the hall master is expecting you."
     Inside was murky and worn by ages. A front hall was huge old lacquered timbers and carved beams and dark paneling. The floor was massive old planks, polished to a luster you could see your face in and dimpled where passing feet had worn grooves. Lamps burned and winter light slunk in through stained glass windows at the top of a grand wooden staircase. All around were guild works: paintings hung high on the walls; tapestries with bright colors and woven metal threads that caught the light; carvings and statues in nooks and on plinths; vases and pots and urns on display.
     We followed our guide through that museum of a foyer and up the grand staircase. Threadbare banners hung down from high rafters. Dust motes swirled lazily in the light from the stained windows, glittering in the sunbeam. The air was musty and yet still freezing cold. And it was like that through the old halls: old architecture in need of repair and a fortune in artworks. I started to wonder if they'd been trotted out to impress until I noticed details like sun-fade on carpets and paintings; gilt rubbed away where bodies had passed by; dust in difficult-to-reach corners. What looked like a bronze casting of intertwined Rris bodies hanging on a wall had a patina on it. All those pieces had been there a while.
     A final hall with narrow mullioned windows on one side, their small, herringbonepatterned rectangular lights warping the sunlight that managed to filter through. They cast herringbone-shaped shadows across the works interspacing the doors on the other side: browned paintings, a remarkably samurai-looking suit of brightly colored ceramic armor on a stand, a narrow copper urn as tall as I was, and an alcove containing what looked a hell of a lot like a stuffed Rris that startled the bejezus out of me. Then a final arch with double-doors painted with a trompe l'oeil so faded that the illusion of a bookcase was long-gone.
     Our guide swung both doors open and stepped aside to usher us in.
     It was a long room, a high room, with bare rafters overhead. Tall, narrow windows were spaced along one wall. There wasn't as much on display in there. What there was seemed quite inconsequential compared with the works outside. A few very small paintings, faded and flaked almost beyond recognition. I saw a piece that looked like burns on a piece of wood. It reminded me of cave painting. There were stands with shaped stones on them. Some wooden totems that looked on the verge of falling apart.
     All old, I realized. Very old. Archeologically old.
     The circle of cushions was laid in the middle of the bare wooden floor in the otherwise-empty room. The low hexagonal table they were arranged around looked, again, old. Tohaski invited us to sit. We sat. On cushions of leather worn smooth and soft.
     Tohaski had an aside with one of the porters waiting at the door and returned to us. "The Hall Masters will be with us shortly. Can I offer you food? We understand there can be problems with fancy foods, but there are simple dishes: bread and cheese and meats? Perhaps water? Wine?"
     Chaeitch's ears pricked up, but Rraerch calmly said, "Some food and perhaps water would be appreciated."
     Ears went down again.
     Simple dishes. The bread was fresh. Still warm. There were fermented curds, which tasted a bit like cheese. There were cracked segments of bone containing grilled marrow. Bison tongues and cheeks. Sweetbreads. Nuggets of pickled bear liver. Honeyed salmon strips. Nothing dangerous for me, but certainly not what would've been trotted out in a boardroom back home.
     And grilled bone marrow isn't half-bad.
     We nibbled. Tohaski exchanged formal pleasantries with Rraerch and Chaeitch. "A word of caution," he told us. "Ah Hais'aich... the Master is somewhat... eccentric." That was a word that I didn't entirely understand. I literally translated it as 'not as expected', and then as eccentric, which may not have been accurate.
     "But be that as may, he is still the Master of this Guild."
     "Understood," Rraerch said.
     'Excellent. Now, Ah Rihey, I have heard you have been visiting collections around the city."
     "A. Several people have been good enough to let me view their galleries. Some are very impressive."
     "You have an interest, of course."
     "I find it... interesting. How your... view on the world differs from my own kind's. Your art can show that."
     He looked... puzzled, glanced at the others as though they might have something to add. Before he could say anything else the door was opened again, a porter stepping in and aside to hold the door open. He was closely followed by others.
     "Ah, masters," Tohaski said, standing as several Rris in finery entered. One of them was being helped along by another, wavering on those long feet bones. At first I thought sick, then noted the threadbare grey fur, the thinness, the faltering gait and realized age. Much age.
     Again, that'd been in the briefing. But, they'd said he was the authority in the somewhat bohemian — in several senses of the word — internal structure of the Guild. What I was looking at was someone who looked a lot more... advanced than I'd been told.
     It took a while for the others to get themselves settled. The older Rris — the Hall Master — was helped to his cushion where he settled, adjusted his cloak and finally peered blinked across the table and asked, "Why is there a bear in my hall?"
     Hedia looked like she was about to choke, eyes flashing white around the rim. "Sir!" she interjected, fur literally standing on end.
     "Sir," one of the others hastily said, "that is not a bear."
     "Really?" He blinked myopically at me. "It looks like a bear. "
     "Sir," Tohaski was saying to his superior. "That is the guest you were told about. He isn't Rris. You remember."
     "Of course I remember," the Guild Master snapped. "You didn't say he was a bear though. You are a bear, aren't you?"
     I said, "Rawr."
     "Rot, sir!" Hedia tried to interject.
     "Mikah!" Rraerch sighed. Other Rris looked startled.
     "I mean, greetings, sir."
     "Ah," the elder Master said. "A talking bear. A fine trick. Does it also play an instrument?"
     "No, but I can balance a ball on my nose."
     "Yes, sir," Tohaski interjected, "but perhaps we should attend to matters at hand."
     So, the local Hall Master was a few bristles short of a brush?
     "This individual," Tohaski was saying, "has come here from Shattered Water. If accounts are to believed, perhaps further than that. He is a guest of the king. He has brought new knowledge and skills. Many guilds and institutions are looking to make use of them. We have an opportunity to talk with it and see what we can learn."
     It. I didn't miss that.
     "A talking bear?" the older one sound incredulous. "And how does this affect my guild? It sculpts? It paints? Carves? Weaves?"
     "It offers knowledge," the secretary said. "We want to see how we can best use that in the Guild's interest."
     "Business," the Hall Master grumped, glaring at me. "Always business now."
     "Yes, sir,' Tohaski said. "And ah Rihey here..."
     "Who?"
     "The bear," I provided.
     "Ah. Huhn, quite," ah Hais'aich blinked at me, as if confused, then waved a shaky affirmative.
     "Ah Rihey here," Tohaski restarted, "may be able to give the guild some beneficial insights."
     "A? How? Is he an artist?"
     Tohaski extended an open hand to me. "We had heard that you were such."
     I looked at them, from one to the other, and said, "No. I'm not."
     There was a noticeable pause. Tohaski looked from me to my companions and back again. An ear twitched back. "Excuse me? You have produced paintings and portraits for various people, haven't you? The Queen of Cover-my-Tail commissioned you. And I believe ah Ties here has also done so."
     "Oh, yes," I said. "They have. They did. But I'm not an artist."
     "That does sound like an artist to me." Tohaski frowned. The older Hais'aich actually seemed to brighten, like he was enjoying this. "Then how would you describe yourself?"
     "I think most artists would feel insulted to have what I do compared with what they do. Did," I said and considered how best to phrase this:
     "Artists produce what they feel, a? They try to make their... feelings a part of their work. Then perhaps people wish to buy that. What I did was nothing to do with what I felt. I made what my client wanted. They would have an idea of how it should look and I... I just made it look... properly made? Clean? I kept the paint inside the lines. And not to standards that could be considered art."
     "But you can paint."
     "I can draw and paint. A. So can a lot of other people. Engineers. Architects. Botanists here draw quite excellent depictions of plants, but they aren't artists. I can also operate special types of machines and tools to produce works that are... acceptable and — more importantly — cheap. So, what I did was not making great works such as you have in your halls here, it was producing cheap, pretty-looking things that would be forgotten in a few months.
     "Now, tell me: is this the point where you suggest I join the Artists Guild?"
     A pause. Rraerch and Chaeitch looked concerned; Hedia actually looked horrified; the Mediators were motionless, expressionless. Then the Hall Master bared a snaggle-toothed grin and chittered. "Hai, so business CAN be interesting. Why would you believe that the Guild would want you?"
     "Seemed to be the direction things were heading," I said. "Was I wrong?"
     Tohaski looked affronted. "It had been suggested."
     "I told you he would have no interest," the master growled.
     Interesting. The doddering old dotard suddenly seemed a lot sharper.
     "And why would you think I would have an interest?" I asked.
     The old master flashed teeth again. "The charter, hai? You don't know of it?"
     "Another one?" I asked.
     "General guild charter," the secretary elaborated. "A guild has oversight over all of their business conducted in the city. All artisans in Red Leaves and surrounds conduct their business through us."
     "And what do they get out of it?"
     He cocked his head. Just a fraction. As if I'd asked a peculiar question. "For many from crèches they receive housing, education, formation and honing of their talents. There's funding and support. Exhibitions in the right places. Making the world aware of them. Finding patronage for their services and works. And the Guild stands behind them in their dealings."
     "That's necessary?"
     "Sometimes people want something and don't wish to pay for it."
     "Hmmm. And what if an artist doesn't wish to join?"
     "Then they are outside the Guild," Tohaski said. "They don't have Guild approval or backing."
     "It is illegal?"
     "Charters state that one cannot compete with guilds in areas where there is a guild presence. But, there are always outsiders."
     "Many choose to do that?"
     "Not the successful ones."
     "Odd how it seems that a lot of successful artists are the ones who aren't around to actually get paid."
     "Mikah!" Rraerch hissed.
     "Huhn," the Master growled and lapped from a bowl of liquor. "And what would a bear know of art? What would your idea of art be?"
     "As a bear?" I considered. "Probably something that tastes good. For myself... I think it changes from artist to observer. I know people say that art is something that can change the way they feel."
     "Huh. And what do the artists say?"
     "They don't usually care about that. For them it's about the need to express something, an idea or feeling."
     "And why do you do it?"
     "Because I can do it and other people can't. They want to show things: pictures or ideas or plans, but they can't do it themselves, so they hired me."
     "Ah. As our artists' patrons hire them."
     I paused. "Hmm, perhaps not the same."
     "You think not? You have taken commissions. You have said so, did he not, officers?"
     Rohinia merely tipped a hand. Jenes'ahn didn't budge.
     "Ahh," I said. "That. Ah Ties, how much did I charge you for that commission?"
     Chaeitch didn't look up from tamping his pipe, "Not a thing, Ah Rihey."
     I turned back to the guild Rris. "The work I did for her Ladyship I did in exchange for a tour of the Estate gallery. That was all. I could charge, but I'm not interested in a business in that. I have no interest in competing with your guild, or in joining it."
     "Additionally," Rraerch noted, "if Mikah were required to join a guild because he did or knew something they considered valuable, then really he would have to join practically every guild out there. That is not workable."
     "So," I said into the awkward silence, "you invited me here today. Is there something I can assist you with? Or was this all a cunning plan?"
     And then Rohinia leaned forward. "And the Mediator Guild would be interested in hearing just whose plan it was."
     "Sir?" Tohaski ventured, and I saw a flinch there. "May I ask what you mean? There was no plan..."
     "What I mean is that somehow your Guild managed to get this appointment ahead of many others. Other guilds who — in all frankness — are considerably more important than your own. Yet somehow your application stood out from the rest. I have seen nothing here to warrant it. I've only seen a somewhat blatant attempt to perhaps increase your guild's standing."
     Tohaski hadn't moved. "Constable, that could be considered slander."
     "Only if it isn't true," he retorted and bored onwards. "Your application was moved forward with remarkable speed. That is being investigated. And you have made mention of several subjects that are not well-known. Your guild is not renowned for your intelligence gathering, suggesting this information came from elsewhere. None of the reasons for someone providing you with that are favorable.
     "The good news is that your guild is also not known for political scavenging."
     "In what way is that good?"
     "Because it is seeming more likely that someone is using you as a means to their own end. They're using you as a tangle to slow other proceedings down. Now, I would assume that someone approached you with some information that they said you might be interested in, a? A supporter of the arts?"
     Neither of the others moved. That I could see.
     "I thought so," Rohinia huffed. "And this individual wasn't anyone you knew."
     A pause, then Tohaski said, "She claimed to be a merchant in a position to have heard some things. As a patron of the arts she wanted to make a contribution. There was a meeting in a tavern. She provided... information."
     "Which was?"
     "Fragments about ah Rihey that weren't commonly known. About his dealing in Art Guild affairs. And some select sections of guild charters," Tohaski said and then a frown wrinkled his muzzle.
     "She also pointed out the... benefits having ah Rihey as a guild member. But was quite reticent about revealing anything about herself."
     "A," the Hall Master scratched his own gray chin and flashed teeth. "It does seem convenient when you say it like that, a?"
     "And nothing ventured, nothing gained?" Rraerch huffed, saying what the rest of us were thinking. The Guild master just blinked placidly, not giving anything back.
     "And this messenger — was there anything else about her?" Rohinia asked. "A description?"
     A waved shrug. "Maybe older? Maybe not. She looked older but didn't move like it. She claimed to know a lot about ah Rihey. Told enough to make it believable."
     "Did she say how she knew that?"
     "She said she had been in a position to deal with others who'd worked with ah Rihey, that was all."
     Huh. That sounded suspiciously familiar.
     "She did provide a list of the times that he'd been dealing in Guild affairs..."
     "Supposedly," Rraerch interjected stiffly.
     "Forgive me. Supposedly dealing in Guild affairs and suggested it would be in our interest to enforce that."
     "So you seek to entrap him?"
     "Entrap?" The Hall Master laid ears back. "No. Follow the law of the charter. Dealing in art is provenance of the Artists Guild. It is written and established by your own guild, Constable. Ah Rihey has been producing artworks for very highly esteemed clients. A commercial undertaking. So it was only fitting that we requested him to join the Guild. As he has not commissioned for profit though..." the Hall Master rubbed at his chin again. "She neglected to mention that."
     Rohinia huffed in a thoughtful manner. "We would like to spend some time investigating this further. I think the Constable here will have a talk with your secretary. Meantime, Mikah's time here is valuable. You have managed to acquire it, I would suggest you use it."
     The Hall Master lifted his bowl. Lapped again and regarded me with glittering eyes. "I would wonder how a bear could provide us with assistance."
     Rraerch leaned in. "He has been able to provide many other Guilds with hints and suggestions as to how they can improve their own businesses."
     "And he knows our art, does he?" the Master returned. "I have heard that he does things differently from normal people. Thinks in other ways."
     "But he knows other kinds of art."
     "Is that good?" the Master asked. "Do we need other kinds of art?"
     "I don't think so," I said. Heads swiveled to stare at me. "What?" I said back to the stares. "Look, you don't make art like that."
     Rraerch cocked her head. "What's the difference from what you've done elsewhere?"
     I frowned. "I mean, art is... personal. It is a people-thing. If it is... right, then it becomes art. Does that make sense?"
     Blank looks. The Hall Master, though, looked like he was enjoying the show.
     "Okay. I can show some examples of what my kind considers art, but then what? You would just copy it? It would be meaningless. Art has to... grow. It has to be accepted as such. Just because my kind call it art does not mean yours would. It's like your scent-works — the most important part of them for you is meaningless to me. Is that better?"
     "That makes sense, of a kind," the secretary conceded.
     "Huhn. He does see colors we can't," Chaeitch added.
     Ears pricked up. "New colors?" the secretary asked.
     I quickly held up a hand to forestall that. "I'm sorry, but it's probably not what you think. Same colors, but I just see... more of them."
     "You can't describe them?"
     "Darker reds mostly. I think you see them as gray or black, but I can see red in there."
     "Such as the Constables' coats?"
     I shrugged. "Sometimes gray is gray."
     "Huh," the Hall Master huffed. "When you talk about other art, are you intending mediums or styles or techniques?"
     "Yes," I said. "There is some of each. They... relate to one another."
     "You have examples?"
     "Of a sort, yes.
     "Has anyone else seen these?"
     Rraerch and Chaeitch indicated yes.
     "And constable?"
     Jenes'ahn did the same.
     "And your opinions?"
     Rraerch and Chaeitch hesitated, then their ears twitched when Jenes'ahn said, "A variety of looks and styles and materials which owe nothing to traditional schools. Things look familiar, but they lack the [roots] and [heritage] which known works have grown around. There are concepts that are foreign, and underlying principles and details that are simultaneously intriguing and completely disturbing. They are not Rris works."
     That... was unexpected. The other two also seemed taken aback. But the Hall Master looked thoughtful as he waved an acknowledgment. "Thank you, constable. That sounds like something I would like to see. I have to say that at my time in life there are not a great deal of those anymore."
     And that was something on my forbidden list. I looked back to the Mediators.
     "Perhaps," the Hall Lord ruminated, "something could be arranged."
     "Something?" If Rohinia had eyebrows, they'd have been raised.
     "Those works your associate spoke of, seeing something like that would be worthwhile."
     "The Guild is not in the habit of bartering its requirements," Rohinia said in tones as calm as a glacial spring.
     "Of course not. And such a thing has never been suggested."
     "Of course not."
     "However, our own humble guild would have to make... outlays to provide all the information you require. Not cash, you understand. Some of this outlay would be in the form of our Guild assets. Something that is difficult to reimburse."
     "Ah," Rohinia rumbled. "We are interested in this individual you talked with. Any information about her, her location, associates, meeting places, anything would be considered helpful. And, of course, you are aware that withholding information from the Guild carries its own penalties."
     The secretary looked at his boss. The Hall Master waved a shrug. "There is really not a great deal more we can tell you. But we might be able to establish contacts with some people who introduced her to us. Of course, your own Guild can go claw out your own answers. But some of these people are the sort that require... incentive to get them to stay around to talk to."
     "Huhn." Some calculation. "Perhaps something could be arranged then."
     "But if we did, what then? What do you have that could reimburse our assets? Ah Rihey here carries an art gallery around with him?"
     "Oh, he is full of surprises," Chaeitch muttered.
     "Quite," Rohinia said drily, and then: "You would not be disappointed."
     "Can the Guild guarantee that?" Tohaski asked.
     Rohinia didn't flinch. "Sir, I can guarantee that."
     The Hall Master returned the look. Then wrinkled his gray muzzle at his secretary. "This is more amusing than I'd imagined."
     His secretary sat up a little straighter, coughed. "Constable, we accept your offer. Show something that interests my master, then you will have everything we know about your person and we will arrange contact with people who might know more."
     Rohinia considered. "If your information is valid and of use to us, that is agreeable."
     "A deal, then."
     Rohinia inclined his head. "Thank you for your cooperation," he said, then to me: "Mikah, can you show some samples?"
     I swung the laptop case around on its strap, then paused, drumming fingers on the leather. "That is not going to cause problems? You did set the conditions."
     "Art only," he said. "You can do that."
     "A," I said. And he knew as well as I did that just showing that was going to cause problems. So why would... unless that was what he was intending. That sounded like something the Mediator Guild would do.
     So, I unwrapped the laptop. Hedia was looking around, from the Land-of-Water Rris to me, as if trying to decipher what was going on. The artists guild Rris just watched in polite interest. I selected a montage I'd played before. Works from old masters: Raphael, Da Vinci, Caravagio, Monet, Degas, Turner... all the old favorites.
     "Ah," the Hall Master said when I turned it around to show them the screen. "A lantern show. I saw one at a fair once."
     I set the show playing. The artist Guild members started. All of them. I saw ears go back. Then the Hall Master blinked.
     "That is not a lantern show."
     He leaned in closer. "Rot. What is that?"
     "A machine showing art from my kind," I said. "That painting is by Rembrandt. The Night Watch."
     "They all look like things like you."
     "They were all made by things like me."
     "Huhn," he said. Others' ears twitched back at the perceived slight. Then he asked, "What is that?"
     "That is... a ceiling. Painted some centuries ago."
     He watched while the camera panned. "That is impressive. Odd though. Many strange creatures and aspects."
     "A lot of it is... metaphor. Is that the right word?"
     "Is it?" he asked.
     "Cautionary tales? Is that better?"
     "Huhn," he grunted absently, eyes glued to the screen. Vemeer. Monet. Graduating through the Garden series. "No definition save by color," he mused. "A feeling of a form."
     Impressionism in a nutshell.
     Comparing landscapes from Turner and Lorrain with Fogel's modern colorscapes. Sculptures from da Vinci and Rodin and Michelangelo. Gothic architecture and Baroque excess. Architecture and sculpture. Fifteen minutes wasn't enough to cover a fraction, but it was all the Mediators needed.
     "Enough," Rohinia said quietly.
     "What?" the Hall Master growled absently, then jolted upright. "Wait, what? No! Not yet. Constable, there's..."
     "Enough," Rohinia repeated, just a bit louder. "Sir, there was an agreement."
     The Hall Master bristled, literally, and drew himself up to bark something back. But I suppose he didn't get to that position by being that foolish. He subsided, pricklishly indignant and looked back at the laptop as I closed the lid. An ear flicked. "A, there was," he said and sucked a breath. "And I would expect to see more of this when all is done."
     "As per our arrangement," Rohinia reminded him.
     "Yes, Constable," the Hall Master said and looked at me again. "There is more in that... box?"
     "A," Rohinia said. "There is more."
     So the Hall Master looked around at his associates, then to Tohaski he said, "Give them what they require."

"This was most unexpected!" I could still hear Hedia protesting as she clambered into the other carriage with Jenes'ahn. "They were insulting! That was not intended. I can assure you..."
     Whatever she was assuring was cut off as the door to our carriage closed.
     "So," I said as we started moving and the carriage swung away from the Artists Guild hall, "you set that up, didn't you."
     Rraerch and Chaeitch both twitched. Rohinia just cocked his head slightly. "Why would you say that?"
     "Their request got pushed through so quickly? The Art Guild? You made it happen. Talked to his lordship, a?"
     Afternoon sunlight panned across the cab as we rounded a corner. There was no expression there but I still felt he was smirking at me. "Why would we do that?"
     "We just saw why. You got something you wanted. And you made them think they're indebted to you."
     "They seemed to make all the decisions themselves. And we got what was required."
     "Yeah," I grumped. "Jenes'ahn can handle that?"
     "A. The Guild will go to those places the meetings took place and backtrack from there. If there is something there, they will find it. She is thorough."
     "Oh, is that what you call it."
     "She was assigned to you because she is very good at what she does. And she is supposed to protect you, you should remember that."
     I hadn't forgotten why they were there, but I wasn't going to get into that while Chaeitch and Rraerch were around. I didn't think the Mediator Guild would have any compunctions about silencing any leaks.
     "Is that going to cause more problems?" I asked. "Showing them those works?"
     "What problems would you anticipate?"
     "Main one would be when they realize those are copies of the artworks. Then we get into the 'if everyone can have a copy of art then what worth are they?'"
     "And how would you respond to that?"
     "They are copies," I shrugged. "They look like copies. And the more people who want a copy then the more valuable the original becomes. Oh, and of course you charge for the copies."
     "Huhn," he considered. "Then it doesn't sound like a problem."
     "Don't worry," Chaeitch chimed in, "if there's a chance for a problem, he'll find it."
     "Not helping," I said. "But you think they won't talk about that?"
     "No, they will," he said.
     "And you don't think that's a problem?"
     "It can be... handled."
     Okay, so it was something the Mediator Guild had wanted to happen. They'd let the relatively harmless Artists' Guild see something that would have any other Guild screaming for more. And I was certain the Mediator Guild knew damn well it wouldn't hurt to have something that people wanted.
     The afternoon schedule included another visit, this time to a brickyard. Almost the antithesis of the morning's encounter. That meeting with the owners and financiers was exactly what their business was: industrial and formulaic and important and dull. I was shown ovens and kilns and mounds of different sorts of dirt and clay and additives. The outgoing products were bricks and tiles of surprising variety. You can't use housing brick for sewer construction, and the linings for kilns are surprisingly complex. So there were carefully guarded skills and techniques handed down from master to apprentice.
     And they wanted to keep them that way.
     In other words it was another meeting with people who wanted new and better and cheaper ways of doing business, but who didn't want to upset the status quo. Again.
     Then there was more talking in a stuffy and darkening office where I sat and tried to tell them things without saying anything the Mediator Guild didn't approve of. I couldn't really say enough to be of any real much use; just enough to annoy and tantalize them. Not a good way to make friends and influence people.

It was dark out when we got back. No wind, a star-spangled sky, and biting cold.
     I closed the door behind me. Closed my eyes. Let out a long breath.
     Long day. A long day of being insulted and toyed with and then dealing with people who want something new as long as it doesn't change anything. And also a long day without food, so the smell of hot cooking wafting through the suite caught my attention like nothing else.
     "Welcome back, sir." Yeircaez quietly entered through the staff door. "Food has just been set out in the sitting room, if you wish."
     "I do," I said. "Thank you."
     He hesitated, then inclined his head and retreated.
     Food first. Then shower. Then bed. That was a plan I felt I could follow.
     There was a thick stew of meats and vegetables. Bread fresh from the oven. Seared salmon strips. Blood and honey cakes. Cheese and meat pies. Sweetbreads. Grilled tongue in cranberry juice. A chilled vodka-like liquor spiked with lemon juice served in a frozen bottle.
     "Started without me?"
     I looked up, halfway through a chunk of bread dunked in stew as Chihirae sat herself down beside me. She wore rumpled breeches and I saw specks of frost flecking her fur. "You're back late," she said and looked over the spread, probably noting the dent I'd made in it. "You haven't eaten today?"
     I shook my head.
     "Rot. That's no way to treat a guest. Everything else was all right?"
     I swallowed a mouthful and said, "Pretty normal."
     She plucked up a piece of fish and popped it in her mouth. Chewed. Still staring at me.
     "What?"
     "Aesh Smither seemed a little... well, annoyed," she said.
     "Can't imagine why," I said as I sponged up stew with the bread.
     "Did you do something?"
     I considered that question from several angles. "Probably."
     A sigh. "Sah, Mikah..."
     A cough from the door interrupted. We both looked around to see Hedia standing there. "Ah Rihey," she said. "Aesh Hiasamra'this. Please excuse the interruption at this hour."
     Just her? No mediators or anyone else? "It's okay," I said from old habit. It wasn't a word she'd ever know. "This isn't another meeting is it?"
     "No, sir," she said. "It's an apology. About today. Ah Hais'aich calling you... what he called you. He had no right to do that."
     Chihirae's eyes went black.
     "Oh, that doesn't bother me," I said hastily.
     "However, his lordship is most displeased. He is making it known in the strongest possible terms that this sort of behavior won't be tolerated."
     But his lordship wasn't there. His mouthpiece was making the apology. So, Bluebetter was probably unofficially distancing itself.
     "Hmm," I said. "It does seem they were taken advantage of."
     "Sir?" Hedia's ears went back. "That is no cause to be rude, sir! To call someone a bear..."
     "What?" Chihirae squeaked.
     "... as he did is just insulting."
     "I've heard worse," I said. "Look, it's not a problem."
     "It reflects poorly on his lordship, on us all."
     "I think it bit them. Their idea didn't work. It bit them and now they will not be happy about it. A lesson for others maybe?"
     "Huhn," Hedia growled. Tail lashed. Thought. "Sir, may I convey to his lordship that you accept the apologies?"
     "You may."
     "Thank you, sir," Hedia bobbed her head to me. "Ah, incidentally sir, there is one more thing."
     "And that would be?"
     "We have word an exploration ship has returned from [Europe]. It will be making harbor tomorrow morning. His lordship thought you might be interested in being there. The Mediator Guild is aware and has no objections."
     I didn't really know what to say to that. "That could be... interesting."
     "Then you wish to attend?"
     "A. Why not."
     "Very good, sir. The arrangements will be made. And thank you for your time. Apologies for disturbing you, sir. Ma'am."
     And after she'd left Chihirae was still gawping at me. "What?" I asked.
     "A bear?!"
     "Hey. I remember you called me worse."
     "That was... How are you not insulted?"
     "Years of practice."
     "Rot you. No wonder Aesh Smither was so angry. Who is this Ah Hais'aich?"
     "Artists Guild Hall Master."
     "What happened?"
     I sighed and nibbled on a pastry. "I don't think it was their fault. They were played. Someone... led them to insult me; to cause trouble and perhaps an incident."
     "The Mediator Guild is involved?"
     "A. But this might not be about me."
     "What do you mean?"
     "As Hedia said, it won't reflect well on his lordship. So, I'm thinking it might just be an internal problem. Bluebetter seems to have those."
     "They want to make ah Thes'ita look bad? That would do it."
     "A. If that's what they're after?" I said and absently reached up to scratch her furry back. Her guard fur was still chilly, the inner layers much warmer. She rumbled something I felt through my fingertips and leaned in, head on my shoulder.
     "You don't think it is?" she asked after a while.
     "I don't know," I said, still scratching. "I have enough trouble understanding what Rris want. I'm not going to try and guess at things like this."
     She chittered. "But you think that the Hall Master wasn't at fault?"
     "The Artists' Guild?" I asked her. "Really? Someone like the Merchants' Guild might plan something like that, but I think they would be a lot more... subtle about it. These people... their Guild doesn't seem to be the kind to play games like that. I'm know I'm not the sharpest rolling pin in the drawer, but even I find it doubtful."
     "You think so? Huhn," she wriggled her shoulders to press back, "even blunt claws have their uses."
     "Oh? I can't imagine what for."
     "Hah? Such a lack of imagination?"
     "Must be. All I can imagine right now is a hot shower."
     "Is that all?"
     "Perhaps a bed after that?"
     "Hah. I would imagine you will want your sleep."
     "Hmmm, I don't think believe I said anything about sleeping."
     "No?" She laughed again. "I thought you might want to get some, what with getting up so early tomorrow."
     I looked her. "Early? What?" She stretched against my scratching, one arm then the other as she gaped jaws in a tongue-curling yawn and smirked at me. "You know that the morning tide tomorrow morning is about five o'clock?"
     Which would mean that generous offer to see the returning ship meant we'd have to leave here about...

So. That's why Chaeitch, Rohinia, Hedia, and myself found ourselves standing on a freezing gray dockside at five-thirty in the morning.
     I hunched down into my coat against the gusts that slapped at us and chased foam from the tops of the wavelets chopping across the harbor. Breath was whipped away in pale streamers. The sunrise was decidedly unspectacular; just a glow in the east and a gradual lightening in the pewter-colored overcast. A few gulls wheeled against that gray. Other winged rats strutted across the quayside, pecking among the ice and dirty snow and squashed fish and torn rope ends and other detritus that littered the cobbles.
     This wasn't a government dock. There were ships and boats of shapes and sizes tied up along the length of the quayside and on the piers jutting out into the harbor. Civilian vessels: fishing boats, traders, coasters for the most part, all sail-powered. Rris were working on the vessels, doing maintenance or loading provisions or cargo. Wagons and animals clattered along the promenade. Ice frosted rigging and the nets hung on racks along the quay.
     Pretty much the same as most other ports I'd seen.
     The pier we were waiting at was empty, save for our own little group and a crew of waiting dockhands down at the far end. The shoreward end was blocked by a cordon of guards to keep the hoi polloi out and there were no other vessels moored along its length. It was reserved for the ship coming in, way out there beyond the stone breakwaters. One of the exploration ships the Bluebetters had sent out to boldly explore new frontiers was coming home. In the predawn gloom I hadn't been able to see anything except the signal lamps burning on the towers at the mouth of the breakwater and sparks from the funnels of the steam tugs struggling out. As the day lightened I could see sails shifting around as it did nautical things to slip into the harbor. No engines on those things so they needed the tide and a friendly breeze. And the breeze wasn't being too friendly at that time. The captain was riding the tide and trying to slot his vessel into the harbor while the wind blustered in from odd angles. So a few sails billowed taut as the ship angled in to where the primitive tugs could latch on.
     Hedia had spent some time telling us about the ship, about the Rustwing Ranger, and when it had departed, about its captain and the intent to explore and map and recover anything that might have value, be it animal, vegetable, or mineral. She'd wound down after a while and now we just watched the slow show off in the distance. I took some time to look at the others waiting around at the foot of the pier, beyond the cordon. Some of them looked annoyed. Those ones also looked wealthy. Others more practical clothing had more of a resigned and clerical air about them. They were also waiting, alone or in small groups, their breath streaming on the wind as they talked quietly. There were many glances my way, but the guards kept them at a distance.
     "Who are all these people?" I whispered to Chaeitch.
     "Stakeholders," he said around his pipe. "Or representatives. From bankers, financiers, merchant guilds... anyone with a paw in this venture. They want to get an idea what sort of return they might have."
     "Profitable?"
     He squinted out toward the incoming ship. "Not sure. I think people are just starting to realize that what they don't know can be valuable."
     The tugs had the ship. It'd reefed sails and let the smaller craft chug their way toward the dock. As it approached what struck me was the size of the thing.
     The Racing Pigeon had been larger. Hell, I'd seen bigger cabin cruisers.
     It reminded me of a boot — tubby-looking, raised decks at the front and back. Not much room in there. The large mast was central, with all the sort of rigging and spars you'd see in pirate movies. Smaller masts fore and aft with less fiddly ropework. Wood was battered and bleached and weather-stained. The hull was rimed and patched and parti-colored where repairs had been made. So were the sails — the square sheets had originally been a rusty orange. Now they were a patchwork of patchworks. Ice frosted the rigging, decks and railings, a section of which was missing. Down at the waterline I could see a skirt of barnacles and strands of billowing weed.
     I huddled down into my hood and scarf and watched. As the ship was nudged into its berth. As ropes were thrown to shorehands and tied off and a gangplank was levered out. Crew bustled around the decks and rigging, breaking off icicles, tying things off and packing down sails and other paraphernalia. Their officers took the final steps back onto dry land. And they looked as worn as their vessel: scraggy, salt-matted coats, patched clothes, a noticeable wobble in their gait as they stepped onto firm ground. But, they'd been away for several years, exploring the dark continent of Chihes Os and other places on something that would be considered a hazard to shipping back home. That took some brass ones.
     The returned sailors seemed in good spirits and there was laughter and good-humor as the officers approached and Hedia moved to greet them. And — of course — one of them saw me. I saw the high-ranking officer look my way, do a double take, and then stare.
     "Rot and mange!" I heard the exclamation. "I thought we were the ones who were supposed to be presenting the strange beasts."
     I sighed. It was an auspicious start to the day.

The coach door clacked shut. Chaeitch and Rohinia settled themselves into the seats opposite and the Mediator glanced out the window, then reached up to thump on the ceiling, once, twice, and then creaked back into the heavy folds of his travel-stained roadcoat and watched me. Chaeitch fiddled with his pipe as the coach lurched into motion.
     I also leaned back into the plush upholstery, inhaled wood and leather and beeswax polish and ocean smell and wet Rris fur and the faint-but-ever-present smell of the city. I was feeling... well, irritated. At what'd happened that morning. And I shouldn't have been. I'd been through all that before. It was just that that morning...
     "You handled that... well," Chaeitch eventually said. "Didn't he handle that well, Constable?"
     Rohinia kept his opinion to himself and turned to watch out the window.
     "Well, how was he to know?" Chaeitch added.
     It wasn't like they could radio ahead. Of course they had no idea of who they were meeting.
     "A," I conceded.
     "Something seems to have disturbed you, though."
     "You think?"
     "I thought you were accustomed to, ah, standing out."
     "A. Thought I was."
     "This was different?"
     "No," I said, working my shoulder as it twinged. Damn cold got in down to the bone. "No. It was... old. All these meetings we've had, all these highborn and merchants, they've been forewarned; they've been told what to expect. Probably told how to behave. That fellow, that was normal. That's the way most Rris react to me. Even if they've been told otherwise, that's what they're doing underneath. I'm used to it, but I'm not exactly happy about it."
     Chaeitch scratched at his chin. "Huhn. Understandable."
     "You must remember? The first time you met me."
     "A," he said, after the briefest pause.
     "They told you first, a?"
     "Yes. They did. Very specifically."
     "And?"
     "And it was still a shock," he admitted, wagging his hand in a shrug. "You do make an impression, but they had cautioned us."
     "As they're doing with these meetings, I suppose."
     "No doubt. However, there was the fact that you were intelligent. And you knew things. And you made bad jokes." He considered for a few seconds, then added, "Actually, that helped."
     "Really?"
     "A. A little. But perhaps that's just me."
     "So, do you think that might work at the university?"
     He tapped thoughtfully at his pipe. "I don't believe faculty is known for their sense of humor."
     "Rot," I sighed. "So much for my career on stage."
     The university That was our schedule for the rest of the day. The quorum's decree was due the following day, and there was a sudden call for the University's experts' opinions. They had questions for them, so, inevitably, there were more questions for me. And thanks to our little sideshow that morning, we arrived at the university campus while the morning mists were still rising.
     We drew up in the courtyard outside the new administration building in a rattling of metal on cobblestones. This time there weren't the gawping crowds, but the few who were present stopped and stared and more faces started to collect in the windows. So, it wasn't a widely publicized meeting. That was a good sign. Within a minute a single Rris, I was fairly certain it was the same grey-whiskered rector who'd met us last time, hurried out and down the steps.
     "My lords," the rector greeted us, bowing to Hedia, Chaeitch and Rraerch, and even to me. She looked a little flustered. "You are earlier than expected."
     "Traffic was light," I said.
     She gaped for a second, eyes wobbling between me and the other Rris, then she defaulted to a simple, "Yes, sir. Very good, sir,"
     "Mikah," Rraerch hissed. "Apologies. Our previous engagement was cut short."
     "I see. Then if you would care to come this way, my lords. Your appointments are still preparing, but we can offer our hospitality in the meantime."
     "Thank you."
     We were led through hallways, through doors, down a couple of steps, through a connection between the newer building and a much older one. From stone floors, to wooden floorboards with grooves worn by the passage of feet. The ceiling was low, supported by head-knocking beams that might've been straight once. And the whitewash on the walls was yellowish, the ceilings sootsmeared above where lamps had burned. A few paintings dotted the walls, nothing that looked like the work of a master. More prevalent were the boards, plaques, wooden panels. Dozens of them with ranks of Rris script burned or etched into them. Names? Dates? Some were new, others cracked and faded with age. There were also more prosaic items: dusty slates with chalk lists scrawled on them; rosters or schedules with little carved pegs in the holes; notes and notices tacked up on scraps of paper in hallways. The place had been well-used for a long time.
     The room we were ushered into was a lecture theater. It looked old, with visible joists and whitewashed plaster in the two-story high walls. Overhead, no-nonsense iron chandeliers swung from black beams. Stepped tiers of black wood occupied half the room, each broad step lined with battered old seating cushions. They looked down onto a raised stage with more cushions waiting. There were blackboards on the walls there. Above those were wooden panels, a half-dozen, each a meter or so high with a relief carving of a Rris' face on it. Cabinets and tables were pushed to the edges of the room. Light spilled in through narrow windows along the far wall. They almost looked like windows you might see in a chapel — tall and narrow, the lights arrayed in complex geometric patterns — but these panes were monochromatic, milky and translucent. Light and privacy. Nothing for heat, though. Breath frosted on the air.
     The rector gestured at the cushions on the stage. "If your honors would care to take your ease here. I assure you the wait won't be long. Some edibles will be provided momentarily," she said and the second we were seated she hurried off.
     "A bit early, I think," Hedia murmured.
     "Constable?" Rraerch called as Rohinia also headed for the door.
     He paused briefly, "I doubt the cooks here have been briefed on Mikah's requirements."
     "A," Rraerch said as the Mediator departed with a swish of tail and coat-tails. The rector had been right — we didn't have to wait long. Mere seconds before a group of Rris hastened in. Not exactly who I'd been expecting.
     "Sir! I apologize for..." Makepeace gasped. She'd been running. She frantically looked around and seemed to relax a little when she saw the room was otherwise empty.
     "Apology accepted," I said. "Now, what were you apologizing for?"
     "Sir," she heaved another breath and composed herself. But her tail was still bottled. "I heard you'd arrived. I thought I was late."
     "We're a little early, Representative," Rraerch said. "Our previous engagement ran short."
     "Yes, ma'am." Makepeace said, again looking around at us, then the Rris behind her.
     They were staring. Openly. At me. "Hai, these are associates from the university. Ah Khit. Ah Wheiris. They've been assisting me with... they've been most helpful."
     They kept staring.
     "And Sir," Makepeace kept on, "they've been trying to find out where you might have come from. There're pictures from across the waters of things that look a little like you, but not like you. If that makes sense."
     "It does," I said. "Thank you."
     "And they want to know if your information is actually true."
     "I believe that's why we're here," I said.
     "A, sir. There is this. " She leaned in close to hand me a sheaf of papers. That confused me — she knew I had difficulties with that. But she took the opportunity to whisper, "There's something else. Sir, I have to tell you..."
     She cut off, ears canting around just as more Rris came in.
     "That might be of assistance," she said a little too loudly as she pressed the useless papers into my hands. "Later, sir."
     I nodded. "Okay. I understand. Later. Thank you." She withdrew, taking her two gawping assistants with her.
     There were staffers first, with the promised refreshments. Rohinia followed, taking station by the door. All the food was plain stuff, but the breads were fresh from the oven. The rest of the mob weren't far behind: the rector returned with more senior administrative staff who bustled in making careful apologies to Hedia. Rohinia politely but firmly blocked a few who tried to approach me.
     Next to arrive were the professors, the experts in their various fields. I had no doubt that I'd met them before, or that they'd seen me at the last presentation at the university, but I was damned if I could remember any names. They trickled in in ones and twos and larger gaggles, younger and elder, a couple of gray-pelts with walking-sticks, some others looking like they'd literally just climbed out of bed. They were directed to seats by the senior staff. I noticed that few sat where directed, but all were glancing at me and whispering among themselves. I felt that familiar anxious tension in my muscles and guts.
     The reason we were there were the last to arrive. A trio of Mediators escorted the quorum representatives in. They looked very different from the university staff; they carried themselves differently, and they were all impeccably groomed and expensively attired. They seated themselves in their own segment of the auditorium, away from the faculty, and opened cases to produce knee-boards and writing implements. The Mediators spread out, either side of the stage. Rohinia and another stepped aside for a quiet discussion for a couple of minutes before that Mediator strode back to the center of the stage like an umpire taking the field between two teams.
     "Honoreds." The deliberate word rose above the white-noise hiss of quiet Rris conversation, which dampened down. "Honoreds. So you are aware, the Mediator Guild will be regarding this session. Proper decorum throughout will be expected. We have no compunctions about ending this session if those terms are not followed."
     There was a scratching hiss of Rris murmuring from the university side, raggedly quelled when one of the senior professors looked around and snapped something. Another stood to say, "We understand and accept the terms."
     And one of the representatives who looked to be taking the place of spokesman... woman... person, offered similar sentiments.
     It was a variant on a theme I'd heard before. Rris don't go for elaborate and formalized rituals, but that came pretty close.
     The Mediator looked from one to another, then waved acknowledgement. "Then the Guild will witness. You may continue."
     The Mediator Guild faded into the background and the representatives' spokesperson took the stage.
     "Faculty and honoreds, thank you for your attention today. Interrupting your schedule is regrettable, however this is a matter of some urgency."
     A few snorts in the crowd.
     "We have been asked to evaluate a series of joint proposals offered by Land-of-Water. These proposals are ambitious. They involve acts of construction and engineering that many have stated are either impossible or — at best — ruinously expensive and will most likely not provide an acceptable return on investment. Interested parties requested an open quorum to investigate the feasibility of these requests, and especially the claims made by Land-of-Water's guest."
     There was motion across the stands as heads turned my way.
     "While there is no doubt that ah Rihey is an intelligent creature," damning with faint praise, there, "there is still a great deal of controversy over just what he is, where he came from, why he is here and just what his objectives are. Guild members have felt the previous question sessions have resulted in answer that they haven't the foundations to interpret correctly. Therefore we have requested this gathering to try and clarify some of these issues with yourselves — sages in a wide range of subjects — present.
     "Our objectives are to try and understand more about their guest. And if his — and Landof-Water's — intentions align with Bluebetter's. We would ask that you listen and be ready to assist with clarifications when requested. This will not be an open forum, so hold your opinions until called up. Anyone not complying with this request will be removed from the proceedings. This is understood?"
     There were muttered grumbles, hisses, and growls from the cheap seats. An administrator stepped forward to wave them down and say, "It is."
     The representative paused for just a heartbeat, then looked at me. "Ah Rihey, you do understand this?"
     "A." I nodded and looked around at the tiers of interested hairy faces. "Clear enough."
     "Then we shall proceed." The representative picked up a sheaf of papers, produced a pair of pince nez spectacles and perched them on his muzzle and began.
     They were questions I'd been asked and answered a dozen times before: where did I come from? What did I do there? Why did I come here? What were my intentions? What was my relation with Land-of-Water? Would these innovations work? Were they in the best interest of Bluebetter?
     All things I'd covered before. The only difference this time was a room full of academics and scholars.
     Which made it interesting.
     Practically everything I said was queried by scholars. So it took longer. A lot longer.
     "You are saying you were where you come from, then you were here?"
     "A."
     "How?"
     "As I've said, I don't know. All I know is I was walking and there was a flash of light. When I woke up the area was different, but I didn't realize how different until I found that town."
     "You say you are from another world. How could you not notice the difference?"
     "I've also said that apart from my kind and Rris and our civilizations, our worlds are almost identical. Same plants and animals. And I certainly wasn't expecting anything like that, so the differences I saw I just couldn't explain. I thought I'd just become... lost."
     "A," another academic spoke up. "There has been some talk about your theory. Do you realize how many variants would come into being if every decision created a new existence?"
     "Infinity is quite big. And I have said that all I know are some theories that were already considered... impractical. I don't know for certain what happened — I can only guess."
     "Then wouldn't it be more sensible for us to believe you come from another continent?" "Then you would have seen a great deal more of us before now. We've explored most of our entire world. Rris aren't there."
     "Do you have any proof of that?"
     "The best evidence I have the Mediator Guild has already seen. You will have to ask them about it."
     Unsatisfied grumblings from the gallery. So they had asked. I could guess what the reply had been.
     "Very well." The lead representative studied the next item on his list. "There's disagreement over how profitable this venture would be when considering the cost. Is it justifiable?"
     "I would have thought that would be one of the first things you would have investigated. I don't have all the numbers of production and trade. You do. You are more capable than I am of evaluating that."
     "We have done that. The question is do you think it is?"
     "A. I do. It took us weeks to get here from Shattered Water. Any trade has to go the same route. Being able to do that journey in a couple of days, with a hundred tons of cargo on every trip, that is quite justifiable."
     "And the expenses to create such a line?"
     "Yes. As has been mentioned, the innovations in manufacturing, engineering, metallurgy, and chemistry that are required will have continuing applications elsewhere. They will pay for themselves. Many times over."
     "Huhn," the representative studied the list again. "Some of the experts in economics here have pointed out the expansion of industry this enterprise would necessitate. The amounts of steel required are quite extraordinary. Is that feasible?"
     A scholar stood. "Sir, some of the economic school have raised an additional issue: when the projected is completed what becomes of that excess industry? There will be a glut on the market."
     "By the time it's completed those industries won't be able to supply enough," I said. "Other projects and industries will be growing. Shipping, for example. They are going to start to want steel boilers and hulls."
     "Steel ships?" The representative blinked. "Won't they sink? Rust?"
     "Ask the experts," I said, gesturing at the gathered scholars.
     Another scholar ventured, "It's possible. Any tin pot floats, for example. But the amounts of metal, the metallurgy and construction techniques... all would be unknown quantities."
     "And what about the engines?" another spoke up. "Anything powerful will only fit into a ship or a building."
     "And forging that length of rail?" said another.
     The representative raised a hand to quiet them. "Those are also valid issues."
     "The engines can be made smaller and more powerful," I said. "The designs go along with new materials and construction techniques to manage the pressures. Again, they have other applications. As for forging the rail, that's what machines are for."
     Murmuring amongst the scholars. Several quiet debates started and were just as quickly hushed.
     I looked at them, then back at the representative. "Do you have a name?" I asked.
     "Impolite of me. Ah Khatchir, at your service."
     "Well, Ah Khatchir," I said, "All the things I have told you about are as I said. They are practical. They are machines. They do what people make them do. It the same with the engineering and other trades — they are all practical, it is just a matter of the tools and where
     you put the lever."
     "Hear, hear," I heard that — or the equivalent — from somewhere in the room.
     "Sir, you can ask me all the questions about technical aspects, but I can assure you it is all feasible."
     The representative Khatchir turned back to his associates and there was a brief interlude as they colluded. He turned back, "Is there anyone here who can categorically state that this undertaking is completely impossible?"
     More hurried muttering, debating and bickering and bristling and pointing of fingers, but in the end the faculty administrator was able to stand and say, "Sir, there are reservations, but we admit that what we've heard is technically... possible. Expensive, but possible."
     "Very good," Khatchir said and turned a sheaf of paper over. "Now, Ah Rihey, we would like to hear why you have chosen to assist Land-of-Water with this."
     "Why shouldn't I?"
     A pause. "Because they aren't your kind."
     "None of you are," I said and then sighed. "Understand, I didn't choose them. Things just worked out this way."
     "But you stay there."
     "I stay there because they... know me. They are accustomed to me. And it is easier to do the work I am paid for if I am not travelling around all the time. And if I sold myself out to the highest bidder it would be never-ending."
     "This means Land-of-Water has exclusive access to your knowledge."
     "No."
     "No?"
     "The Mediator Guild oversees that. But, is that a concern?"
     "Of course it is."
     "Really?" I looked around, at the scholars and the Guild representatives or auditors or whatever they were, and at the Rris around me. "I'm not an expert in your ways, but I've seen a lot of effort being made to avoid accepting the knowledge that Land-of-Water has offered."
     "Mikah!" Rraerch hissed and Chaeitch reached to nudge her leg and she bit back what she was about to say. That was covered by a chitter sounding from somewhere in the room, quickly cut off. Khatchir's muzzle came up.
     "You understand we are attempting to ensure that this is a deal that is good for our lands as well."
     "Ah. I see. I understand," I said, nodded. "A question?"
     "Yes?"
     "How many of the guilds are in favor of this exchange and how many opposed?"
     "I am not sure..."
     "You must have some idea? If they are mostly opposed then we may as well pack up and leave now, a?"
     "No. Many of them are in favor, but..."
     "But... ?"
     He looked around, at his colleagues — who wore a variety of interesting expressions — and at the faculty audience. Who also seemed quite interested. Rraerch was staring at me. "I do not believe this is the place to discuss it."
     "So, a few are against this offer. I wonder why."
     "Ah Rihey," he took a breath. Glared, "They have a right to their voices. We are here to try and determine if their cautions are justified."
     "Of course. Quite prudent."
     "Thank you," he said and his ears slowly lifted. "And now, we have to ask, do you think that the requirement that Bluebetter adopt this new measuring technique is necessary?"
     Again. "I do."
     "Why?"
     "An example: You want to trade with someone far off. You communicate you want to trade a 'finger' of material. How can you be sure their measure of a 'finger' is the same as yours? From what I've seen here, you can't. There's almost certain to be a factional difference between your 'finger' and theirs, and over thousands of units, that would add up. Then there's the loss in taxes and tolls and tariffs and all those amounts along the way.
     "Another: an engine made here breaks down in a distant city. Rail engine or ship or timepiece, it doesn't matter. You need repairs there, but their machines use different measuring systems. The parts they make won't fit your machines. Making parts the same size everywhere means that parts will fit. And if they are all identical, they will be easier to make.
     "Does that cover everything?" I looked at the Land-of-Water Rris around me. Shrugged. My throat was hurting after that. "Probably not. But in short: it is something that is necessary."
     "Ah," Khatchir said and looked over at the scholars. "Does this sound like an accurate [something]?"
     Some muttering, then one stood. "Sir, it's an oversimplification. However..."
     "However?"
     More muttering. Some gesticulating and protesting. "However, sir, it's essentially correct."
     Khatchir looked back to me. "It can't all be good. What's in the other hand?"
     The downside? "That would be changes," I said. "Changes to your way of life. To what is important and what isn't. Crafters who make things by hand now may find that changes."
     "How?"
     "Simple things can be done by machine. Over and over without mistakes."
     He looked to the scholars. "That is possible?"
     "Should be. Looms already do that," someone responded.
     "So they will lose their livelihoods?"
     "In the same way the people who made scrolls lost theirs' when books were invented," I said and got a blank look in return. "Jobs may be lost. New ones will be created. Crafters may find their skills falling out of demand. Or perhaps in even higher demand."
     I said my bit then took a sip from the water. My throat was aching already. But they continued.
     "And this endeavor you have proposed would affect the existing trails?"
     "Considerably," I said.
     "If I ask you 'how' will you again say 'it depends'?"
     "I would say, I cannot know. There would be changes. That is certain. They should be for the better. Towns along the route would prosper. There would be more work required. Goods and people and information would move faster and further and easier. But...
     "There wouldn't need to be as many stops. Towns and villages that rely on the traffic now might not have them. The new work might require skilled workers. The changes wouldn't be all good. Mostly good, but not all. Change is like that."
     He regarded me, not blinking. "New skills?"
     "With new engines... machines... you will need people who understand how they work. Who can operate them; maintain them; repair them. The tracks would need maintenance. The stations and stops on the way would need people working them and looking after them. There would be providers for fuel and water. Food and accommodation for all those workers. Security. Transport of local goods to local depots. Loading and unloading. Payroll and accounts and management." I took another drink. "Oh, and that's all after the construction is done, which would be a moving town in itself."
     "And that, that construction, that is too ambitious. I believe some of the people at the university have investigated it?"
     "We have, sir," a scholar spoke up. "The mention of a 'moving town' would be accurate."
     "Difficult?"
     "Saying yes is perhaps an understatement. The proposal we have seen would involve grading, excavating, tunneling, levelling, bridging, and filling. Hillsides would have to be removed for cuttings. And the grading required would dictate a limited number of route options, with tunnels and bridges never attempted before."
     "Can it be done?"
     "Today? Without the assistance that's been offered? I would say no."
     Khatchir looked at me. "And you think it can be done?"
     "My kind did it. Same... similar thing."
     "There are stories about your kind. You can do things we can't."
     "We aren't better than Rris. Or smarter. We just have... more tools."
     "And those are part of the offer?"
     "Yes. As your expert there said it is not an easy task. You will need the right tools for it."
     He exchanged some low words with his associates before turning back to me. "These would include..."
     I looked at the Land-of-Water Rris with me. "Better steel. Better steam engines for moving equipment. Digging and drilling machines. Possibly better explosives, but I think that will depend on the Mediator Guild. They have reservations."
     "Because of military applications?"
     "I believe so. Strangely, the one of my kind who invented such an explosive won a world-acclaimed peace prize for it. Services to our kind. It saw more use in construction than it ever did in warfare." I looked at the Mediators, who stared back impassively. "But who am I to second-guess the Guild."
     "Huhn. And you would be giving all this to us if we cooperate in your deal."
     "Not exclusively," Rraerch spoke up. "We do intend to extend this offer to other nations as well."
     "But we are the first."
     "You are," she said. A lot was left unsaid there. Khatchir just flicked an ear and went back to his papers. "Very well. Now, the Mediator Guild has an injunction on the distribution of your information pending their approval. Do you feel this is appropriate?"
     I thought that one through, then said, "I have to say I do."
     "To block dangerous applications?"
     "If you mean military applications, then yes. There is that. But that can be difficult to determine. I've mentioned to them before that some of the simplest ideas can be turned to military applications. No, what concerns me involves these worthies," I gestured to the gathered scholars. They suddenly looked more interested. Several dozing members were prodded awake.
     Khatchir also glanced that way. "How so?"
     "Because giving you the answers is cheating, a? I tell you answers that these worthies have been working for years to find. It's easy. It's cheap. People might start asking 'why do we need these expensive universities and scholars?'."
     A muttering from the audience.
     "If I show you how to make something, then you are copying it. You didn't do the work to discover it, to make it. You are just taking my word for it. But I don't know everything. My kind doesn't. We miss things, or neglect them." I shrugged, remembered who comprised half my audience. "It's like a student cheating on examinations — they will get something for nothing, but the failure to prepare thoroughly will come back to bite them later on."
     Khatchir gave the faculty a look, then glanced at his notes.
     "Thank you, Ah Rihey. One more question. Why?"
     I blinked, unsure. "That question is a bit... general."
     "I mean, why do you do this? These new things. These changes. You understand the confusions and problems they're causing; you've said as much yourself. So, why do you persist?"
     Again I had to consider that. "Sometimes, I ask myself the same thing. The Mediator Guild does too."
     The Guild members stirred — scarcely discernable lifts of the muzzles, but otherwise kept quiet.
     "Then why?"
     "Because I can help. If I didn't, I think I'd feel guilty."
     "You think we need help?"
     "I think that when people die from illnesses or injury that can be prevented; when they need food or shelter; when unknown geniuses waste their lives just because they're desperately scratching a living somewhere; when people live in fear of bandits and problems that don't need to exist, then, yes, they need help. And if I can provide that, then I think it's worth it.
     "On a more selfish note," I added, "if I make things better for you, I make them better for me. A?"
     He cocked his head, then nodded in acknowledgement. "Again, thank you, Ah Rihey. Those are my questions. My associates will now deal with your cross-examination."
     Cross...
     So, that was where the rest of the day went. There were more questions; more of the same questions but from different angles, asked in different ways by different people, with different twists and phrasings. It was intensive, drawing in the rest of the Land-of-Water delegation and university experts as required. Sometimes I suspect they were trying to angle for unofficial information, but the several times a moment like appeared a Mediator made an unobtrusive gesture and the questions changed direction.
     My voice gave out. There was a break for fifteen minutes or so. Then they continued.
     For the rest of the damn day.

Guards from Land-of-Water and Bluebetter formed a moving cordon, keeping the circus that had congregated outside at bay. It seemed that the entire university had turned out to get an eyeful as we left. There were Rris students in the halls, at the windows, on the roof, and possibly even in the classrooms.
     While we walked faculty and higher-ranking administrators walked with us, trying to press the flesh. There were offers of hospitality, a meal and accommodation. But I'd had enough of being stared at for one day. Rraerch dealt with them, politely declining the offers, begging previous engagements. My throat ached and if I'd had to deal with it I might not have been so diplomatic. It'd been a harrowing day and I was tired, annoyed, sore, exasperated, and annoyed.
     Outside was freezing dusk. High above the looming rooftops the sky was velvet blue melting to black, the sun lost to view. A few stars were visible, along with single smear of cloud high enough to still glow molten in the last grasp of sunset. Down in the confines of the university courtyard the light was long gone. Our carriages were waiting in a pool of light spilling from their lamps and the front doors while the periphery was gloom and darkness broken by periodic glimmers from gaslamps and windows. Shadows from those lights grew and jittered and fractured as students milled about.
     The heater in the carriage was on, so the temperature in the cab was above freezing. Just. I sat, leaned back, and sighed a cloud tinted by the lamplight. After sitting on that cushion for most of a day I ached, all over. My shoulder was making itself felt again.
     Jenes'ahn paused and looked around, then clambered in and settled herself opposite. Rraerch, Chaeitch, and Hedia exchanged some final words with our hosts, then the two Shattered Water Rris climbed in, Rraerch bumping in next to me. Chaeitch thumped on the roof and the carriage lurched into motion.
     Eventually Rraerch said, "That went... well. I think."
     "No gunfire," Chaeitch said. "That was a nice change."
     "I was meaning I think Mikah answered those questions as well as could be expected."
     "Thanks. I think," I croaked. "They were just the same questions. I've been through those a dozen times already."
     "From what I could tell they seemed neutral. Apart from that question that could have fractured the University against Mikah there was nothing that seemed aggressive. Constable? Your opinion?"
     Jenes'ahn turned from the window to study me. Then huffed a 'huhn'. "They were verifying what they've been told. Cross-examining. They will be basing a lot of their decision on that performance."
     "Will it be impartial?"
     "Define 'impartial'," Jenes'ahn replied. "They will do what they feel is in the best interest of their respective clients."
     "Who are... ?" I asked.
     "Many and varied," she responded. "But the conclave was joined under the mandate of a decision beneficial and protective to the greater Bluebetter entity." A translation of her words. "Individual and guild interests are weighed, but should not be unduly influential."
     "How does that work out in reality?" I asked. "Donations? Handouts? Gifts? Donations? Bribes? Blackmail? Threats? Do they sway opinions?"
     She actually lifted her muzzle to look down her nose at me. "That is most explicitly frowned upon. The Guild will enthusiastically investigate anyone entertaining such ideas."
     "Ah," I nodded. "Then they'll be more careful."
     "You think they would risk angering the Guild?"
     "I think they risked blowing up a bridge with Guild members on it," I reminded her. "They tried to kill you at Three Birds. Messing around with this would seem to be very tempting."
     She stared flatly at me.
     And I got it then. "Which is what you want, isn't it. This whole thing is to draw them out. The Guild could have pushed this agreement through, but you..."
     "No," she said. "We couldn't."
     "You have the ability, don't you?"
     "We do. But not the right. This is a government's choice. They will rise or fall on the strength of that. We will support their decisions and enforce the laws and rules as our charter requires, but we don't have a right to interfere in decisions like that."
     I looked at the others. "She's correct," Chaeitch said.
     "We can't influence it, but we can use it," she said.
     "So, which way do you want this decision to go?"
     "An agreement would be favorable. Although risky."
     That made the nape of my neck prickle. "What does that mean?"
     "Either way, people will not be happy," she said. "We are just not sure which side the [radicals] may be on. They may move against you either way."
     "What?"
     The last of the daylight was almost gone, but there was just enough in the gloom of the cab that I could see her cock her head. "If they agree to the deal then their businesses and industries may be threatened. If they don't, then Land of Water will continue to have your knowledge and an advantage. Either decision could have various dissatisfied parties who decide to take some form of action."
     "Action."
     "Well, getting rid of you would be the most straightforward way to redressing the balance."
     "You mean, either way it goes someone could come after me?" I almost squeaked.
     "A," she said blithely.
     "Is that supposed to make me feel better about this?"
     "No. That is just peoples' nature. But an acceptance of the deal is more likely to stir the pot. We are prepared."
     I shook my head.
     "What does that mean?" she asked.
     "They've surprised you before."
     "You think we can't protect you."
     "I'm more concerned that you can't protect Chihirae."
     She was silent, staring at me in the gathering darkness.
     I tried to meet that gaze. "A saying of my kind is that no plan survives contact with the enemy."
     She sat motionless.
     "Or how about: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."
     "Colorful," she eventually growled. "We do know what we're doing. It would certainly help if certain involved parties didn't withhold information they may have received from other parties working with the opposition."
     "I told you what I know," I said. "Chihirae... seems to be being targeted and I'm concerned about that. If something were to happen to her..." I trailed off, not sure how to complete that sentence.
     A hesitation. "You've drawn her into the field. I'm not sure it's so simple to extricate her."
     I swallowed. "You have an idea of who is dangerous?"
     Another pause. "In general, yes."
     "Then don't let them get too close. If you can't stop them, then I might have to try something."
     Beside me Rraerch stiffened and this time the pause from the Mediator was different. Jenes'ahn was motionless. Frozen. "Mikah," she eventually said. "This is the Guild. You are something else. You are saying this for her? Or for you? Don't make this situation any worse with your selfishness, a?"
     "I'm saying this because she doesn't deserve any of it. And I'm saying if it comes to a choice between protecting her or me, you look after her. Understand?"
     "Mikah! You can't expect..." Rraerch protested and I think Chaeitch prodded her. She shut up again.
     A snort in the darkness from the direction of the Mediator and the silhouette of her head turned back to the window. "That is not going to happen."
     "Then I will be doing everything I can to look after her."
     "Best of luck with that," was a translation of her response.
     I sighed and slumped back. The other two were staring at me, their eyes glimmering like molten metal when feeble lamplight from somewhere outside watered the window. But they didn't say anything. I sat and listened to the iron-bound wheels grinding over ice and cobble, frustrated and annoyed and plotting like hell. And, damn it, underlying it all was the feeling I'd forgotten something.

"I'm just saying that antagonizing one of the people keeping you alive isn't the smartest thing you've done," Chaeitch muttered to me as we marched through the palace halls. Jenes'ahn was ahead, stalking through the gridded moonlight coming in through the multitudes of diamond-shaped panes in the tall windows lining one side of the hall. Outside, a small atrium garden had been turned to white shapes beneath a blanket of snow.
     She could hear us, I didn't doubt that.
     "I just think there must be ways to handle this that aren't so... weird," I said.
     "What do you mean?"
     "They're the Mediator Guild. Governments do what they say. But they are playing these stupid games and endangering people. Can't they just find someone and arrest them?"
     His ears twitched back. "There are issues. Their charter. And I understand there are... challenges by other institutions. They have power in certain circumstances. However, when you are involved I'm not sure they are... appropriate?"
     "Because I'm not Rris?"
     There was a moment's pause before he said, "You would need to talk to the Guild about that."
     In their tongue the word Rris was synonymous with 'person'. I wasn't a Rris, so in the eyes of the law... The Mediator Guild was still bickering over that delineation.
     I asked. "What institutions?"
     "Rot, Mikah. I don't know. Possibly the ones they are watching? Perhaps you should talk to her," he flicked a gesture towards the Mediator ahead. "Although I'm not sure she has many words for you."
     That was an understatement.
     At my door he paused. "Mikah, the Guild is effective. They have proven that for a thousand years. You should think about trusting them sometimes, a?"
     And I knew they weren't infallible. I knew they were fractured and fractious. I knew that a Mediator I'd known had wrangled his way into a position of power through the Guild's own internal control legislature. And I'd been the precipitate that'd set the whole thing off.
     A convenient tool. Who couldn't tell anyone about that.
     I just nodded. "A. Perhaps."
     He snorted. "Good night, Mikah. Get some rest."
     The door closed behind me. Staff were there immediately, taking my heavy coat and boots, asking about a bath, food.
     Yes and yes.
     I was drowning myself under a pummeling stream of hot water in the shower when Yeircaez appeared in the bathroom.
     "Apologies for the disturbance, sir. Aesh Tehi has requested to see you. She pleads urgency."
     "Aesh Tehi... Makepeace. What's she..."
     I stopped and grimaced up into the deluge. Yeah, that was what I'd forgotten.
     "She says it's most important, sir."
     I raked water out of my hair. "A. All right. I'll see her."
     He gestured assent and stalked off into the steam. I stood for a few seconds longer, trying to recall her words. It'd been important, she'd said. But as to what it was... I wiped water off my face, shut the shower down, and went to grab a towel. Distant pipes thumped and clanged.
     "Sir?"
     I'd thought that Yeircaez was going to bring her to the parlor. More fool me. She was standing in the doorway, and she looked more bedraggled than I did. Melting ice was caked through her fur. Her tunic and breeches were stained and frozen and sodden at the same time. Mud and muck still plastered her feet and lower legs. She was dripping black stuff.
     "What happened to you?" I asked.
     "Apologies, sir," she blinked, tried to brush some smuts off. It just smeared. "The cart didn't go all the way to the palace, so I had to walk a while."
     A while? She looked exhausted. "Cart?" I asked.
     "I wasn't able to get a ride with you, sir. So I had to make other arrangements. Fortunately there was a coal cart going this way. They brought me most of the way."
     "A coal cart." I sounded like an echo.
     "Yes, sir."
     "Do you always have to get to and from the university like that?"
     "No, sir. It was just... things were a little busy today."
     "A, they were," I said dumbly, then shook my head and grabbed a robe. "Rot, do you want to clean up? There should be some food..."
     "Sir!" she interrupted. "Again, apologies, but it is important."
     "Okay. Come. We can talk."
     There was food waiting in the parlor. Covered trays and platters. I tied the robe as I settled and looked up at the dripping Rris. "Sit."
     "Thank you, sir." She squelched herself down onto a cushion opposite. The staff were going to have conniptions.
     "Now, eat. Talk. What's so urgent? And enough with the 'Sir', please."
     "Yes... A. I was recently... over the past couple of days I was approached by people at the university. I had thought they were students there, but now I have my doubts. They had questions."
     I'd lifted the lid on a tray. Meat and fruit kebabs, still steaming hot. "About me?"
     "A. About you. But, they weren't the usual ones. They usually ask about your knowledge or your mannerisms or you and... and other things that you like kept private. These questions..."
     She laid ears back and brushed at her tunic sleeves. The ice was melting, dripping. "I thought they were students at first. I didn't realize at first. They had many questions. There were the usual ones, but some were strange. Were you selling more weapons? Were you promoting some guilds over others? Where were you going next? More like that — about you, her ladyship, your movements and schedules... They were asking why you came here, about your agenda."
     "My what?"
     "They said they didn't think you were here for the purported reasons. Did you want to control the moderate supporters? Were you here from Land-of-Water to help enforce the current Lineage? Were you here to suppress the [something]?"
     "I don't know what that means."
     "Dissidents," she said. "Supporters of other applicants. There was an attempted uprising not so long ago."
     "I... heard about that. I thought that was done with."
     "Some don't think so."
     "You think they are associated?"
     "I don't know. But they were wanting to find out your planned movements. I pleaded ignorance."
     I chewed on that news and a kebab. She took the opportunity to grab one for herself. "Have you told the Mediators about this?" I asked.
     "I have only just had the chance to talk to you," she said.
     And they'd kept her waiting and having to hitch rides on coal carts. Hell, I'd done that. But, why'd she come to me? The more I considered it the tighter that little knot of worry became.
     "I think we'd better let them know," I said.
     "I thought you had reservations about the Guild."
     "I do. That's why I think they might not know about this."
     "About what?" Rohinia ghosted into the room. With all his weapons and heavy road coat he was astonishingly quiet.
     "If you were listening in the hall you probably know," I said.
     He snorted. "Some of us have better things to do with our time."
     I shrugged. "Okay. Then you might want to hear this."
     He looked at Makepeace, then slowly sat down on a spare cushion, settled his coat and cocked his head and listened as she told her tale again.
     When she was done it was quiet for a while. She looked from the Mediator, to me, back again. Rohinia wasn't saying anything but was wearing that stony expression.
     "Is it what it sounds like?" I asked.
     "Who were these people?" he asked Makepeace.
     She waved a nervous shrug. "I don't know. I thought they were students. I hadn't seen them before, but the university is a big place."
     "A," he said, almost absently. "And the last time was this morning?"
     "A."
     "And what did you tell them?"
     "A little, to start. They were common questions. Then they asked things that weren't usual, that I didn't know. I said as much."
     Rohinia's eyes seemed to focus on something else.
     "You didn't know," I said and he looked at me. That expression didn't flicker, not one iota. "I have heard about what happened here," I said. "The disturbances. The stolen weapons. The radicals. This was them, wasn't it. I thought that issue had been resolved."
     "That was," he said and sat quietly for a few more heartbeats. "This is... I will have to go," he growled and flowed to his feet with a faint creaking of leather. "There will be more Mediators here tonight."
     "They've been bought, haven't they," I said. "It's an angle you weren't looking for."
     He ignored me. "Thank you, ah Tehi. If you hear anything further, please inform us. Immediately."
     "Yes, sir," she said and he was gone.
     I took another kebab. Makepeace grabbed one for herself and tore in, sharp little teeth nipping off bites. "You think they are dangerous?"
     I shrugged. "It seems everyone is."
     "But why would they target you?"
     "Because they're being used," I said. "They are an internal issue, a? A government problem. Not the Mediator Guild's concern. And someone who isn't happy with what I am or what I might do or what these changes might do to their world has decided to use them. A few of the right words and angry people with agendas can be made to do almost anything.
     "So, whoever is behind this has used mercenaries and hired guns. Now, they are trying these reactionaries. A lot of different angles."
     "A," she said. Then, "One does wonder if they might have had these ones in their pocket all along. And a wonder the Guild didn't see it."
     "Something about police," I said to her, "if you have smart law, you tend to produce smarter outlaws."
     She chewed noisily on her food. "Is that something like breeding llamas for their traits?"
     "Something like. These people, they've had to live with the Guild for a long time. I suspect they are quite adept at finding ways around them."
     Some more introspective chewing, then she asked quietly, "You think you know who is responsible?"
     I sighed. "I think so. I think I've met them. More than a few."
     "But why would they do this?"
     "If you've got wealth and power and there's something that might give you a bit more wealth and power... or take it from you entirely, what would be a sensible move from your view?"
     "Oh."
     "Yeah," I took another bite. "Oh."
     The bedraggled young Rris dripped quietly, then asked, "So, what do we do now?"
     "We? No, you do nothing. You stay out of this. These people are dangerous."
     A pause. And then she said, "There was something I didn't say."
     That apprehensive feeling again. "Should I be worried?"
     "There was a woman."
     And that feeling turned into a certainty. "Let me guess: Maithris?"
     Makepeace hung her head, laid ears down. "The doctor. A."
     "Oh, God. And what did she do?"
     "She came to me at the University. After the last time those others spoke with me she found me. She warned me. She said they'd been asking about you and her ladyship. She said I should tell you about them. And she said to be careful after the decision."
     "Okay," I slowly managed to get my mental train back on track. "That was all?"
     "I... huhn, yes, sir."
     So, maybe not. "All right. She's right about you being careful. If two groups have seen you as a way to get to me, then you should be careful. I will ask about guards for you."
     Her eyes widened. "You think that's necessary?"
     "I think the less you are seen with me the better. You don't know anything else about her? Where she was going? People she was with?"
     "No, sir. She was there, then she wasn't."
     I sighed. "Yeah, that sounds like her. Thank you, Makepeace. You should go. Get cleaned up." I waved at the trays, "And help yourself."
     Not even a hesitation as she grabbed kebabs and sandwiches and some rolls from the dinner tray. "Thank you, sir," she said as she filled the tail of her tunic, then hurried out.
     "Are they feeding that girl?" I muttered to myself. And considered what she'd told me.
     So, why had Mai gone to her. Concern for her safety? I didn't think so. Wait, was that for her to be careful? Or for me...
     "What was that about?"
     Chihirae was at the door, looking back toward the foyer.
     "Makepeace?"
     "A. Dripping and muddy."
     "She brought some news."
     "Good?"
     "Not so much," I said, picking up one of the rolls: shredded meat and cheese and beans and tomato in an unleavened wrap. Astonishingly like a taco. "Something the Guild didn't seem to know about."
     "So," she came over. She was only wearing a light green skirt, her winter fur puffed out and freshly brushed, gleaming. She looked at the cushion Makepeace had just redecorated in liquefied coal smuts and sat herself down on the one next to it and then looked at the food, at me, nostrils working. "Bad news," she surmised.
     "I'm... not sure yet."
     "Huh. What happened?" She cocked her head and frowned. "Something at the University, a?"
     I told her. Almost everything. She chewed, listened. The frown bore teeth. "And the Guild?"
     "Rohinia was here. The Guild knows."
     "Rot," she sighed, ears wilted. "This... doesn't stop, does it."
     "They seem to have a plan."
     "A?" Her eyes flashed toward me. "It wouldn't involve using you as bait, would it?"
     "Well, I don't know if I would exactly call it..."
     "Rot and plague, Mikah! They are?! Why would... how can they accept that?!"
     "Because they have no choice?" I said quietly.
     "How can you be so calm?" she demanded, eyes black and ears flat.
     Fear. Even I could see that. Flashbacks to what had happened and what could happen.
     I shifted myself, awkwardly clambered around the little table, ended up kneeling beside her. "You can scent that, can't you?" I asked and her nostrils twitched. "I'm worried. I'm scared. About them; about you; about what's going to happen. I don't know what that will be. I'm not sure the Guild do either."
     "Then how can they protect you? What will... what can you do?"
     I shrugged. "I don't know. I can hope their plan is better than it sounds."
     "Rot..." She just stared at me for a few heartbeats before deflating. "That is not very optimistic."
     "There are few other options," I said and caught that alarmed flinch. "But, they have been doing this for a long time, a? People do hold them in regard. There must be a reason for that."
     "A," she said, a slight easing in her posture. "They do what others cannot."
     "There you go," I said. "This is what they do. They have the experience. They have the strength and the ability to deal with this."
     It was a hopeful lie, but it lifted her ears a bit. "You think so?"
     "As you said, it's what they've always done, a?"
     She chittered and took another roll, sniffing again before biting it. "And the rest of you day," she said. "How was that?"
     "Dull," I said. "All the usual questions again. I think I found twelve different ways to say the same thing."
     "That bad?"
     "Excruciatingly."
     She chittered. "You've been learning new words, a?"
     "That's what higher learning will get you," I said. "And what about you? You had a better day?"
     A blatant change of subject, but she latched onto it. "Oh, yes. I spent some time in the palace library. There was a section on historical records going back to the settlement of Summer Breaks. From a different perspective. Interesting how that changed and shifted. The border has moved back and forth, sometimes a hundred kilometers. They have their own versions of the Fort Estari story. And there was a list of the states that used to exist there, and I'm sure it wasn't the same as the ones I've seen in Land-of-Water. Prosperous lands on that trade route."
     "What happened?"
     "Land-of-Water. Perhaps Bluebetter." She snorted, flicked an ear. "There was a town that was defeated and forgotten. You might remember it, a?"
     "Should I? We went past it?"
     "A. In a sense," she bit at a mouthful of kebab. "We never did find out what those carvings said, a?"
     "Carvings?"
     "I'd have thought you would remember that interlude. The hillside? The snow?"
     "The... Oh." I suddenly did. "Oh. That place? Where we... found those ruins?"
     A flash of a grin. "A. Those ruins. And I was impressed you managed to perform so adequately in the cold."
     "I seem to recall you finding it a bit more than 'adequate' at the time."
     "Well, I know the difficulties you have with the cold. So I didn't want to discourage you, a?"
     "Very considerate of you."
     She chittered and nibbled again. "Different seeing that place than reading about it."
     "It usually is."
     "A. And different again in the libraries here."
     "How so?"
     "In Land-of-Water history records a [flamboyant] bandit lord who ruthlessly dominated passes through the Rippled Lands. In Bluebetter they record a lord under contract to one of the Merchant Guilds executing lawful levies on traffic. Of course these records are hundreds of years old. I would enjoy comparing some of them, but I doubt our hosts would loan these books."
     "Just take my phone," I suggested. "You know how to use that."
     She cocked her head. "That seems a rather frivolous use of such an item."
     "It's not doing anything else." I reached, touched her cheek and she tipped her head. Wiry fur under my fingertips as I scratched gently.
     "Huhn," she took another bite, leaned into my attentions. "Do you know a way of telling if an account is true?"
     "Wish I did. Perhaps, just assume they are both somewhat fanciful."
     "Somewhere in the middle?"
     "If that." I raked fingers down her back. Fingernails not as sharp as claws, but they had their uses. "Maybe the fellow in question had his own life and motives. Someone coming along a hundred years later might not get it right."
     She rolled her shoulders back, muscles shifting under her hide as I scratched. "You think neither is right?"
     "My kind has... had histories of great people. Who then turned out to have never existed, or who were completely different kinds of people. Some people never let facts get in the way of a good story."
     "Then perhaps you should write your own story down," she chittered. "Set the facts down before someone decides to do it for you."
     "You know what my writing's like," I said. "I think I might just confuse people."
     "Oh, so more lessons are in order, a?" she sounded an exaggerated sigh and turned to me. I ran my hands over her shoulders, raking down her sides. She shivered visibly, flashed a pink tongue around her chops and grinned whitely. "How are you going to pay for those?"
     "There's a price?"
     "Oh, there's always a price," she growled.
     "I don't think I have any cash on me."
     "A?" she rumbled, leaned into me as I scratched her back. "That's unfortunate. This will have to do. Ahh, there."
     I held her. Held her. Felt her heartbeat. Smelled her. Warm summer dust and hay fields. Gently rumbling body under my moving hands. Behind her I saw Yeircaez appear in the doorway, visibly flinch when he saw the scene, then ghost away again. Her own hands moved under my robe, spreading it open. A chitter. Then, her claws touching skin, stroking down my chest. My turn to flinch.
     "Calm," she whispered, shifted herself, insinuating herself carefully into the folds of the robes, seating herself in my lap with her own legs around me. Then she sighed and bumped her forehead head against my breastbone. "Calm."
     I tried, even as my heart reflexively lurched when claws skimmed my hide, prickling over old scars. She laughed again, just a chirrup of amusement and nestled in closer, pressing in against my skin. Sharing heat. Holding me.
     "It's not so bad, a?" she urged again, and I tried. Trying to trust her as she trusted me, as words from earlier gnawed at the back of my mind, as she laid her head on my chest and relaxed, as I raked fingers through her fur, as the moment lingered, as I realized the Mediators were right.
     Damn it.

Bluebetter's decision was made behind closed doors deep in the palace. The process took an entire day. And night. And the next morning. It wasn't something to be done lightly.
     Our normal activities were curtailed for that time, both due to the nature of the negotiations and the nature of nature as a winter storm had swept in from the Atlantic. Clouds and snow blotted out the sky. Drafts prowled through halls and down chimneys. Glass rattled in windows as occasional gusts rolled through. And all day long snow and ice had driven in in sheets and flurries and solid blasts that rimed stonework and reduced the world to a swirling grey twilight.
     The Rris took that time to prepare. Dignitaries and Guild and Merchant leaders had been invited and would be present for the announcement. There would be a reception, another ball during which the result would be proclaimed to all simultaneously. That would be in the evening, so there were some hours to kill.
     We took advantage of the lull to tour some of the more obscure palace galleries. Chihirae was with me, so it was just the two of us. Oh, and an escort of Guards, a pair of Mediators, and a custodian guide who led the extended expedition through the darkest reaches of the palace. There were rooms and entire wings housing shut-away treasures. Frigid iceboxes stacked with cloth-covered furniture, flag-sized cobwebs fluttering in high corners, and dust layering ancient carvings and sculptures and paintings. I wandered freezing halls, wrapped up like an arctic explorer and studying alien art through clouds of my own breath. There were works that were utterly unremarkable, others that were utterly spectacular, and others that were simply utterly out of context for me: broken pieces of wood; a stalactite of chiseled obsidian; bracelets of ancient wood and dried blood; skinned pelts of long-dead Rris; a gorget made from multitudes of Rris incisors, all engraved with scrimshaw; a rusting axe head inscribed with indecipherable glyphs hanging in a frame of hammered bronze; paintings of corpses and battle aftermaths; an alligator skull so intricately carved it might have been made of lace; a stuffed and mounted Rris staring with eyes that were polished black riverstones.
     'What does it say to you?" I asked.
     We stood looking up at a painting. The overbearingly tall canvass loomed over us. Thick lacquer over the oil paints was faded and discolored with patina, webbed with craquelure, but the subject was still clear enough. A prairie sky with stormclouds climbing behind a mountainous carcass of a bison. The trio of Rris crouched atop the beast were snarling, bloodied. One clutched a broad-tipped spear fluttering with pennants and colors. Another held fresh-cut gobbets of meat. The third a broken knife.
     Chihirae looked at me. Back to the work. Considered for a while.
     "[Exuberance], I think," she said.
     I also considered. "That word," I eventually ventured. "It means optimistic-happy-hope or excitement?"
     "A," she said uncertainly, flicking an ear. "Exuberance. Why?"
     That was... not a word I would have chosen. I turned back to the painting; the gore and bloodied Rris and tried to see it through their eyes.
     "You don't think so?" Chihirae asked after a minute.
     "I... don't think so."
     "Really?"
     "Really."
     She regarded the picture, then chittered. "One of those times?"
     "A. I think so."
     "So... what do you think when you look at it?"
     "Umm... not exuberance."
     "Huhn." She didn't look away from the painting, stroked her chin with a fingertip while wisps of breath puffed from her nostrils. "That bad?"
     The work was very competently executed. It was well composed and lit. Minimal strokes gave the metal and leather and fur texture. And also the blood, the bone and sinew. Highlights glinted on a dead eye. And for me it evoked feelings of... violence done, distaste, intimidation.
     "Not good," I said.
     "You don't feel that it's showing the end of a successful hunt or endeavor? There are signs of multiple clans joining under a single banner. Something has been given that this event might take place and abundance beckons. New opportunities are being offered. You don't feel that?"
     I cocked my head. "All that?"
     "The symbols are there."
     And they weren't classical ones used in human art. A broken knife; a stormy sky; blood... if they were the symbols she was referring to, then they were all interpreted differently. It changed a lot. It meant the gory themes I'd seen in so many Rris works weren't — to their eyes — horrific. It also meant I'd have to adjust my mental horizon line again.
     "First Jenes'ahn, now you. I didn't know you were an expert on art."
     "I wasn't," she chittered. "I met someone who kept asking questions I couldn't answer."
     "That sounds annoying."
     "A. Very. So when I had the chance to learn a little, I took it."
     "Then what can you learn me about this next one?"
     "Ahh. Huhn, what strikes you about it?"
     "The exposed intestines do seem to stand out."
     "Really? I thought the wolves more notable."
     "Hmmm. They aren't background detail?"
     "Not if you take the setting into account."
     "A... theatre?"
     "Close..."
     It was an instructive way to pass the time, and more enjoyable than sitting around worrying which way up things were going to go. So we spent hours looking at works that were impressive or prosaic or terrible or erotic or mystifying to me, and entirely something else to her. How would I explain religious icons to them in a way they could understand? I asked more questions about various pieces. I got odd looks and replies ranging from 'proud' to 'filled with beauty' and 'extravagant'. Those were the words I had to translate the emotional terms the Rris described, and they were more indications that what I thought they meant wasn't precisely... precise.
     "There you are."
     The call echoed across the high-ceilinged hall. We'd been looking up at a long frieze made from hammered copper depicting a sequence of Rris females teasing or chasing obviously aroused males through woods, then a battle with swords followed by scenes of couples engaged in vigorous neck-biting. She considered it funny. I didn't get it. But at the shout we turned to see Rraerch stalking across the blue-marbled tiles.
     "You should know they will be starting soon. You will be expected to attend."
     "I thought we still had a few hours," I said.
     "We did," Chihirae replied. "A few hours ago."
     That late already? I looked at the deepening grey outside the windows and sighed. Later than I'd thought.
     Preparations were the usual circus. I had time to shower. Then Mediators watched carefully as provided groomers trimmed and brushed out my hair and beard. I ended up with a forked beard, the tines clipped with crimped silver cinches and mimicking Rris cheek tufts. Attire for the night was subdued compared with some of the garb I'd endured in the past — fine wool trousers and tunic and a quilted jacket in light tan and Land-of-Water green and blue with silver piping. They were tailored and fit as well as could be expected. And the tunic was welcome: it was warmer than most Rris-manufactured clothing.
     Chihirae had another surprise, something she'd seen in some movie but adapted for Rris sensibilities. Another dress, a deep, night-sky blue this time. A top that was a cross between an evening gown and a waistcoat. Just tight enough to show form. Falling to a calf-long dress slitted on either side from the thigh down leaving a panel hanging front and back. On a human woman it'd have been an evocative item of apparel. On a Rris... it wasn't the same. There was the fur everywhere, puffing out at neck and arms and elsewhere. As she moved in her stalking gait her legs slipped in and out of view, but there was no... sensuality about it. It was an attitude of poise, of sleek, inhuman focus, a different kind of beauty that stirred other emotions. When she looked at me her eyes gleamed with the same golden luster as the jewelry she was wearing.
     "It is acceptable?" she asked.
     "Oh, most," I said and she stood a little taller. The ball room was lit up like the Las Vega Strip. Lamps glowed, sconces burned, hundreds of candles in chandeliers blazed, hazing the intricately painted ceiling with smoke and vaporized hot wax. Those, and the crowd of Rris dignitaries, ensured both a warm reception hall and a distinctively distinctive scent of Rris.
     There was quite a gathering. The high and honoreds of Red Leaves circulating about the room. There's probably a fine line between costumes and uniforms, and I'm not sure which side those outfits stood on. Not as ostentatious as the attire of the previous ball, but still expensive, flashier and more ornate than just function warranted. I saw bright yellow tunics, polished leather tunics, brocade throws and intricately woven designs, cloaks and capes of intricate patterns, long coats inlaid with gold patterns as intricate as circuitry. Even the servants shuttling drinks and food were decked in spotless rust and green garb.
     We circulated through the crowd, meandering through the ballroom in slow transfer orbits that skimmed the buffet tables. Rraerch and Chaeitch wanted me to network. They'd explained it was important that the people upon who's opinions decisions were made had a favorable impression of me. So, I had to press the flesh, so to speak. Be polite, be calm, behave.
     Hedia and my escort filtered the supplicants. Jenes'ahn and Rohinia made themselves conspicuously present, intercepting hopefuls sometimes before they'd even started moving. A few would be let through to speak with me and for the most part the discourse was polite and civilized and deliberately steered away from business. There were still the stares, the mutterings as I passed and that was never going to change. There'd always be those who had a problem with what I was, what I wasn't, or what I represented.
     Surprisingly enough, I was able to recognize faces. Even put names to a few. A pair from the Banker's Guild bade me good evening and asked if I'd noted any promising talents coming from the Artists Guild. A delegation from the Potters Guild made small talk that was polite enough. A group of nearby merchants made some overly-loud comments about the Mediator Guild starting a menagerie. Yahes Ah Yaershish of the Metal Guild caught me at the bar as I was pondering the drinks selection, suggested something that had a pleasantly high alcohol content, and asked if I was still accepting commissions. And once I saw a small, white, blue-eyed figure watching from the peripheries. She didn't try to approach.
     The evening stretched on into night.
     "They're taking their time," I observed over another glass of something alcoholic.
     "A." Chaeitch puffed on his pipe. He wasn't alone in his peccadillo, and that — along with the candles and lamps — meant the atmosphere was murkier than a twentieth-century economy class. The outside wind had subsided so the balcony doors had been opened. The draft they admitted was freezing cold, but at least you didn't have to cut it into chunks before breathing it. "I'd imagine there's some drama there."
     "Weighing up what's best for the realm?"
     "Huhn, there will be considerations and debts called in and threats made and promises broken and new ones made and every kind of tail-yanking and rug-tugging under the sun."
     "You make us sound so [superficial]," another voice chimed in. The Rris strolled past the guards who just glanced and moved aside. "I'm sure ah Rihey doesn't see us that way."
     Expensive clothes. Not in the glittery way, but well-made with quality in the dark green breeches, the gold belt, the fabric of the soft purple and grey tunic and tooled leather waistcoat. Easy taste and elegance. Two guards lurking in the background. "Aesh Sieathsae," Chaeitch took the pipe out of his mouth and inclined his head. "A pleasure to see you again. I was not expecting to see you tonight."
     The Rris... Aesh Sieathsae. She. She faded into the foreground. An older lady who wore her confidence around her like a cloak. There were a few strands of grey in her muzzle, but she stood straight and didn't blink as she looked me up and down. "I thought I should perhaps see your guest while I had a chance. I had heard a great deal. I see he does not disappoint."
     "We try to please," I said.
     "Mikah," Chaeitch stepped back, gestured to the newcomer. "This is Aesh Siathsae. A Candidate lineage of considerable prestige. Expansive landholds, ranching, merchant routes and vessels. A high name for as long as anyone can remember. She is someone worth talking with."
     "Pleased to meet you, Ma'am," I offered.
     She blinked then — a slow smile. "Likewise, ah Rihey. A strange pronunciation, but quite understandable. You must've had a good teacher."
     "A very patient teacher," I said.
     "She must be, given what I've heard. Now, ah Ties has related my particulars, I'm sure you have some of your own."
     "You seem to know a bit about me already."
     "Merely what I have heard. Some of the tales are... remarkable. I would wonder how much is true."
     "Oh, everything except the bits that aren't."
     A pause. "Was that a joke?"
     "Apparently not, since you had to ask."
     "Ah. Just as I'd heard." She looked around at the interested bystanders and then tossed her head. "Ah Rihey, I am a very busy woman. I have people and lands and many tasks to oversee and attend to, yet I have had to find time to attend to this business. And I have found that some people I regard most highly said I should find time to talk with you. Can you tell me why this is so?"
     A very formal way of speaking. She reminded me of a teacher I'd had before Maithris. That hadn't ended well. "Ma'am, I don't know exactly what they would expect me to tell you."
     "This," she gestured to the room, "concerns you. In fact, it is all because of you. So there must be something of worth about you."
     "Everyone seems to think that. That's why everyone wants a piece of me."
     "There's some who think you can tell us how we should be living."
     That sounded... peculiar. I looked from her, to her guards, back again. "Ma'am, that's something I certainly can't do."
     "Can't?"
     "Can't. Won't. Actually, shouldn't."
     She cocked her head and I sighed, looked around, then tried to explain. "I know some things. I know some science and machines and some other things that you don't, but I certainly can't tell you what to do. That would be dangerous, for a few reasons."
     "You don't think the way we do."
     That surprised me. And it wasn't a question. "And that's an excellent one."
     "I have heard you to talk and seem as reasonable as any person, yet that reasoning is often not the same as a normal persons."
     She was watching me as she used that wording. Fishing for a reaction? Perhaps she got it. "That would seem to be true," I said. "And you seem to be well informed."
     "I have consulted with experts."
     "A lot of those around, are there?"
     "You have to know the right ones," she said. "A lot of stories are prowling. I've been told they are accurate, but sometimes I have to wonder at that."
     "If you can't trust experts, who can you trust," I said.
     She inclined her head slightly. "Quite. There was a book that was most informative. Perceptions of Mind. Most interesting. Show me your hands."
     "What?"
     "Your hands."
     I held my hands out, a little dubiously. She took them, turned them palm down. I saw our Mediator suddenly look interested, but she just examined them for a second before letting go. "Ah," she said.
     "What does that mean?"
     Over at the top of the entry stairs a bell was rung. Heads everywhere turned toward the sound.
     "That would be the decision," she said and turned away.
     "What was that about?" I asked, but she was gone back into the crowd. Her guard looked at me. Hesitated a moment and then turned and followed and that split second was one I'd seen before — that pose, that uniform. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut.
     "Mikah!"
     I jumped as my arm was grabbed. Chaeitch looked up at me, flicked ears back. "What? What's that look?"
     "I..." I looked after her. Head and shoulders taller I could look out over the crowd and see nothing but heads and ears all pointing towards the activity at the front doors. "It's nothing."
     "Good evening. Attention, good people."
     The Rris at the top of the stairs had a good speaking voice. I think it was Hedia — it was difficult to tell at that distance, but the voice carried. "A decision has been made. Bluebetter has agreed to assist Land-of-Water in their endeavors. The terms were found to be reasonable and of substantial benefit to the realm and all involved. Details will be made available to you all. For now, I thank you all for your attendance and support."
     And that was it. I'd expected a bit more pomp and pomposity, some fanfare or show, but the speaker just turned and left and the room hissed into hubbub.
     "Hah! Good news," Chaeitch champed down on his pipestem with a satisfied air.
     "You had any doubt?" I asked. Sarcastically, as it happened, but that didn't get through.
     "A few," he said. "There were more than a few anxious for this not to happen."
     "Looks like there were more who did. So, now what?"
     "Now?" Rraerch said as she stepped up beside me. "Now, we go and get some rest. There will be more work, you can guarantee that."
     Leaving was easy enough to say. Moving through that crowd was like wading through molasses. The guards were a moving cordon and the Mediators circled around like sheepdogs, heading them off as they pressed as close as they could. But there were shouted questions or congratulations or sometimes silent glares and lashing tails. Rraerch and Chaeitch kept pausing to talk to notables, influential people who'd thrown some weight behind the direction of that night's decision.
     I was tired and tense and the room reeked of overheated Rris and smoke and food, but I did as they asked. Smile and wave, politely and carefully thanking sponsors. When they asked the inevitable 'when are we getting it' questions I could only give them the inexorable 'when it's done' reply, and hope I wouldn't be made a liar.
     The flow increased a little at the door. Others had the same idea and were making their getaways. We collected Chihirae, who was looking a little unsteady on her feet. I hooked the half-filled coupe glass out of her hand.
     "Hai," she protested. "That's good."
     I sniffed. Brandy, perhaps. I knocked it back and coughed, blinking tears. Yep, brandy. "A," I said. "It was."
     Rraerch looked exasperated and Chihirae glared, then started laughing and caught my arm as she stumbled.
     I left the empty glass on a plinth with a statue as we left.
     The majority of the crowd was going one way: to the front entrance. We went the other way. And as the noise and lights and smells receded behind us, the amount of traffic in the halls diminished.
     Rraerch exhaled a huge sigh, visible in the dim light. "And that's done," she said. "That was... tense."
     "You had doubts?" I asked.
     "Always," she said placidly.
     "It was a good deal."
     "Certainly. But there always seems to be those willing to drag a grudge back to the campfire. Both our countries have... complaints going back a long way. Some wrong words in the right ears could've been problematic. We're fortunate his lordship is more forwardlooking."
     I thought back to ruins in the hills. Some of those squabbles had been a long time ago. "So, it's done now. Where do we go from here?"
     "Ah Fefthri will ensure word is sent back to Shattered Water," she said thoughtfully, as if reciting a memorized list. "We still have things to do: there are accords to be signed, official thanks to be given, unofficial thanks, documents and schedules to be drawn up. Oh, and more receptions and enough meetings to keep you quite busy over the next couple of weeks."
     "Oh, joy."
     She flicked an ear and I caught a glimpse of moonlight on pale fangs. "I knew you'd be thrilled."
     The corridor was a two-story high gallery. Ceiling-high, mullioned windows on one side, doors and alcoves and paintings and statues on the other. Outside the windows was one of the central gardens, muffled under layers of snow and lit by cold moonlight. The lattice of the window frames threw a net of shadows across the tiled floor and walls and silent artworks. Overhead, murals covered the ceiling, but it was too dim for me to see any details. But what caught my attention was the group of Rris just ahead.
     Four palace staff in their unobtrusive colors. They were cleaning. Or painting. They had brushes and clothes and a trolley and were working on a statue in a nook ahead of us. The others weren't taking any notice of them. Just palace staff. They glanced our way and kept working.
     We kept walking. I saw the Mediators start to take more notice of them, their tails stop.
     Halfway down the hall and the cleaners all moved together, turning towards their cart.
     I grabbed Chihirae and hauled her to the side even as the Mediators shouted something.
     "What..." Chihirae yowled as I clutched her and dove for the shelter of a sculpture, a bust on a stand. I hit the tiles, pushing her back behind the solid marble and landing hard, hitting my knee and scrambling to cover her. For a second she was looking up at me in confusion and I was looking down at her and thinking how embarrassing this was going to be.
     Gunshots. One, then a fusillade, reverberating and hammering around the stone hallway, spiking my ears. Chihirae yowled under me. Other voices screamed, yelled. I tried to cover her as best I could as something whined past, as something spanged off stone, as something cracked and as something solid hit me on the head. More yowls. Voices yelling through the racket as guns cracked and filled the air with smoke and sparks.
     A stunning crash of an explosion, another gunshot, then a silence that was as stunningly abrupt as the gunfire.
     Chihirae was under me, panting furiously, her eyes black opals in which I could see myself reflected.
     "You okay?" I think I said through the ringing in my ears.
     "Off!" Chihirae panted. "Rot! Get off! You're heavy."
     Sharp little stones stabbed my hands as I awkwardly clambered off her. Peeked out from behind the plinth. The quiet evening was different.
     Moonlight was visible as beams through gray gunsmoke, swirling in gusts through broken windows. Sinuses burned with the reek of gunpowder. Debris littered the floor, chunks and chips bitten out of masonry and plaster. Noises were filtering in through the ringing in my ears: Rris shouting, screaming or mewling or snarling in pain while others attended them. Further down the gallery there was shouting. Bells were clanging in the distance. A couple of guards were crouched around a figure on the floor, pressing wads of cloth. A leg was kicking, smearing through a trickle of dark liquid crawling across the tiles.
     Over there... they were okay. Guards were overseeing Rraerch and Chaeitch on the opposite side of the hall, fur bristling, looking shaken but unharmed. And before I could move toward them there were Mediators there. Jenes'ahn was crouched over us, tugging on my arm and barking something at me.
     "Mikah! Rot you! Are you all right? Are you hurt?"
     My head hurt. I touched it and winced. There was blood on my hand.
     "You're bleeding."
     I looked up at the statue we'd ducked behind. It was a bust. Well, half a bust. A busted bust. Whoever it'd been was missing half a face. That was what'd clonked me.
     "A scratch," I said. "Fuck. I'm fine. There're people there who aren't. Go and annoy... help them. Chi? Are you hurt?"
     She was sitting in the corner, hugging her legs. "I'm... not hurt," she said.
     Yeah, I didn't see it. I should've, but... there were other things.
     I stood to look down the hall. Guards and Mediators were moving in on where the ambushers had been. Broken glass sparkled across the tiles. That explosion... a grenade? I could see two wounded being attended to.
     "How many injured?" I asked, then with more trepidation. "Dead?"
     Jenes'ahn was twitching, looking around. She had one of her pistols in her hand. I couldn't tell if it'd been discharged or was still loaded. "Two injured. We were fortunate."
     "Why?"
     She gestured at the other side of the statue. I looked: the whole thing was pocked and chipped. "They were aiming at you," she said.
     Over half a dozen bullet holes. "There were four of them," I said. "How many guns did they have?"
     More Bluebetter guards were pelting into the hallway. Mediators were intercepting them, forming a cordon, directing them. Down the way Land-of-Water guards and Mediators were advancing on the niche where bodies were sprawled. I saw Rohinia pick up a fallen weapon, inspect it.
     "Repeaters," Jenes'ahn spat, as if naming something distasteful. "And why didn't you shoot back?"
     "Oh, I'm sorry," I snapped back. "If I'd known we had a shootout planned I'd have packed my formal pistols."
     Her ears went back.
     Chihirae was still making herself small. "It's okay," I said, offered her my hand, like I might have done to a nervous dog. She looked at it, at me, then closed her eyes and heaved a breath before reaching out. I helped her to her feet. She took a second to just breathe, then shook her head violently. "This again?"
     "A," I said. "I'm sorry."
     I couldn't decipher that look she gave me. "You... shouldn't be. Rot, in the palace?!"
     "A."
     "And our rooms?"
     "I'm hoping they're safer. No strangers wandering around in there. And we shouldn't hang around here."
     Rraerch and Chaeitch hastened to join us, and the questions were predictable. "You aren't hurt?" Chaeitch asked. "Mikah? Aesh Hiasamra'this?"
     "Not hurt," I said.
     "You're sure?" Rraerch insisted.
     "I'm sure. I've got plenty of experience."
     She looked a bit taken aback.
     "Apologies," I said. "I'm a bit... tense. A? And you should watch where you step. Broken glass."
     There was. Everywhere the big windows had been pulverized by the explosion. Who'd had a damn grenade? The Mediators were the likely culprits.
     The Rris did take care where they put their feet. We skirted the bodies down the hall. The wall down there was pocked with holes, speckled with blood. The painting hanging there was slashed and torn. Mediators were working, inspecting the bodies. I saw them roll one, an arm flopping loosely and an eye staring sightlessly. The other eye was... not there.
     "Oh, rot," Chihirae breathed.
     "Come on," I said quietly, moving to try and shield her. Old instincts.
     "Students," Jenes'ahn said and I could've punched her there, but that wouldn't have solved anything. And I knew who they were, where they'd come from.
     An exclamation, then. Abrupt movement. Snarls. Whines. A scuffle.
     "One alive," Jenes'ahn growled, muzzle twitching back from teeth. "We can get some answers."
     "You already know them," I said through gritted teeth. "Come on," I said again to Chihirae, to usher her along, "You don't need to see this."

Chihirae's door slammed in my face. I glumly stared at the lacquered wood.
     "What did you expect?" Jenes'ahn was waiting in the guest wing hall behind me, leaning back against a wall.
     "To not get ambushed in the middle of the palace."
     "I didn't mean..."
     "I know what you meant," I growled and turned back to my door. The guards' ears were twitching, but they kept eyes forward and mouths shut as I entered. For now. Stories in the barracks later though,
     The mediator followed like a nasty shadow. "She's frightened."
     "Good fucking reason. In the palace?! How does that happen?"
     "And how did you know?"
     "What?"
     "I saw you. As soon as you saw them you knew them. You found cover before they moved. How did you know?"
     "You never seen Die Harder?"
     "What? What's that noise?"
     I stopped in the foyer. Turned to face her. She drew up short and hooked thumbs over her pistol belt as she glared back. "Tonight was a formal reception. Everything had to be right and in its place. Even the staff in the ballroom were dressed up. And these rag-wearers were out dusting where visitors could see? I thought you'd seen it."
     "Huhn," she huffed and then stiffened as Yeircaez hastened to greet us.
     "Sir," she hesitated at the sight of the mediator, then bowed, looking distressed. "We have been informed. Staff are being reviewed and we can assure your safety, sir."
     I considered a few choice words for that, but instead settled for, "Thank you." Taking it out on the help was never a good move.
     "Also, sir, if it pleases you, your cook has some food prepared. He thought you might want something after the reception."
     I wasn't hungry. I was strung-out, trembling on an adrenaline come-down. Angry and scared and worried. And I just said, "Thank you."
     The steward ducked her head and hurried away.
     Jenes'ahn followed, through to the parlor. It was warm in there, a fire and heavy drapes and a comfortable cushion.
     "And what did you mean?"
     I sat back, closed my eyes. My knee was still hurting. "About what?"
     "That we knew them."
     "From the university. Students, a? Those anarchists, the ones with the repeaters, it looks like they found some soldiers, a?"
     "It would seem likely."
     "You might want to dig a little deeper."
     "Why?"
     I opened my eyes and she was sitting opposite. "You would know the answer to that."
     She stared back, then deliberately reached and set her pistol on the table. It clunked down on the polished wood and lay there, all dark oiled metal and incongruously delicate ornamentation and engraving. "Because they were sent here," she said slowly. "Those who sent them knew they would not be returning. So they made sure they know nothing."
     "A," I nodded. "And if those who sent them also know nothing?"
     Her ears twitched. "What are you thinking?"
     I took a chance. "There is someone who knows the Guild. They know how you work and your capabilities and constraints. They work around them."
     "That has been tried before."
     "These people seem to be doing it. They're using others to do their work for them. Convenient dead ends when questions are asked."
     "Mercenaries. Those anarchists."
     "A. Them. They may have had their own direction once, but now... I think they are just tools."
     "Well armed tools."
     "A. And used by someone who could get them and their weapons into the palace." "And you have no idea who that might be?"
     "What? How should I know?"
     "You have been talking to interesting people."
     "Who tell me what they want me to hear."
     "And what did you hear?"
     I hesitated. "I was told... if the decision didn't go the right way then something could happen."
     "And something did," she said, just sitting and watching me.
     I could put that together: whatever else might've happened, the opposition were the problem now.
     "Money or politics?" I asked.
     "Yes," she said and her ears flicked around seconds before I heard the suppressed commotion at the door. "Ah," she sighed and picked up her weapon. "They're here. Apologies to be made and accepted. We will finish this later."
     And she stood and was standing beside the doorway as Rraerch, Chaeitch, and Hedia hustled in. The liaison flinched at the sight of the Mediator, then hurried past to me. I saw her stare at my head. I guess the blood from the scratch had matted a bit.
     "Ah Rihey!" she began. "Our greatest regrets and apologies!"
     She continued in that vein for a while. Apologies and guarantees and promises. All very sincere and heartfelt and believable. I'd certainly believed it before. And they'd proved utterly and almost lethally wrong. I was furious and exasperated, clenching my fists under the table. But... I listened and made my own polite noises to calm her. Diplomatic, Rraerch would call it. Polite. But there were limits.
     "I am all right," I finally said. "But other people aren't. Our people... your people've been hurt, just doing their jobs somewhere they should have been safe. Where we had been assured we would be safe."
     Her ears went back. So did Chaeitch's and Rraerch's. Jenes'ahn just watched without saying a word.
     I continued, forestalling any interruption. "So, I am concerned. For us, for the safety of our people here."
     "I can assure you..." she started.
     I held up a finger. "Have you found who assisted them? Who let them in?"
     She stopped dead, pupils dilating to black and ears twisting back. Shock.
     "You are thinking... treachery?"
     "A. Or blackmail or threats or bribes. Whatever it took. I think someone was not happy with your decision. And they are still in your house. I think we still have to be careful, a?"
     "A?" she almost squeaked and audibly sucked a deep breath. Recomposed herself. "A. Ah Rihey. His lordship assures you that everything will be done to rectify this." "He does, does he."
     "Most assuredly."
     "Then should you be standing around here and not trying to find the ones responsible?" I said, wondering just how calm I looked.
     And she looked like I'd set fire to her tail and Rraerch hastily stepped in: "Forgive him. He's been through a lot. We all have. I think some rest would be welcome."
     "Of course," Hedia agreed, obviously thankful for the out. "Completely understandable."
     And Rraerch took the hint, stepping in. "I can walk you, Advisor, If you would — there are some things I would discuss with you."
     They departed. I heard the foyer door close and immediately Yeircaez was there with a covered tray. Not a staffer — the major domo herself. She read the mood in the room and just set the tray and retreated.
     "I need a drink," Chaeitch said and gestured at the bottles on the sideboard, "You mind?"
     "Help yourself."
     "Huhn, you get the good stuff, a? You want one? Constable?"
     She declined. I discovered I really could do with something strong.
     Glass clinked while. I raised the cover on the tray: hot broth, bread, dumplings, smoked salmon and cheeses. I was usually a little wary around Rris dumplings, but our cook knew what I found palatable. I dipped bread in the broth. It was strong, tasted like beef, and softened the rocky crust. Hot and filling.
     A glass clicked down on the table. No coaster. Thick cut glass shaped like an overlytall shot glass. The air above the rim hazed. "You were serious?" he asked as he settled himself where Jenes'ahn had been sitting.
     "About?"
     The narrow glass let him tip it into his muzzle. His face scrunched up, whiskers pinched forward, trembled, then he exhaled. "Good stuff. About what you told her. You think there are others?"
     "Ask her," I jerked a thumb toward the Mediator. "They're expecting it. And help yourself."
     "He's right?" Chaeitch asked Jenes'ahn and her annoyed expression was probably answer enough.
     "Possibly," she said. "It doesn't help that they might now know we are aware of them."
     I snorted. "They already knew that. They've used people who know nothing." A swig of the glass. It was smooth on the tongue and lit up going down. Better than a lot of other Rris stuff I'd had. I took a second belt. Perhaps it helped take the edge off a little. I savored it for a second before asking, "Perhaps you have some other source?"
     "They will make a mistake," she said. "They always do. As you may have done."
     "In what way?"
     "They may have intended this to fail."
     Chaeitch swirled his drink in his glass, considering. "What's the point in that?" he finally asked.
     "A clumsy attempt. It fails. We get cold feet. Leave. The agreement collapses."
     "And Mikah is still intact for someone else to pick the pieces from."
     "Something like," she said.
     "Another government then?" he asked. "Tail-yanking to get their turn faster?"
     "No comment," she said.
     "I don't think so," I said. "Governments... I think they are more thoughtful; slower to act."
     He paused with a strip of salmon halfway to his mouth. "And when they do?"
     I shrugged. "Don't know. I just hope they come up with a better idea than that."
     He popped the mouthful and chewed noisily. Thoughtfully. "So, a Guild or the like, a?"
     "Seems likely. And a few irate merchants is more attractive than having a government targeting me."
     He looked to Jenes'ahn. "And the Guild is doing something?"
     "A," she said. "Word has been sent back to the Guild Hall. There will be more officers arriving, but for now the staff in the Palace will suffice."
     Even rushing a messenger to the Mediator Hall would be hours. More hours to return.
     "They will be here," she said. "They will ensure that only people who are supposed to be here will be here."
     Oh, and they could tell? And what if those people were compromised? Obviously someone who was supposed to be here had let those assassins in. How much access did they have?
     I took another swig of liquor.
     Chaeitch worked his way through a good portion of the food before excusing himself. I had to ask: "Could you please check on Chihirae?"
     He paused. Looked puzzled. "Something wrong?"
     "She had a scare. She was upset. Some good words might help and I... I don't think I'm the right person."
     He looked dubious, but waved an acknowledgment. I heard the door close and sighed, toying with the near-empty glass in my hand. "That was right?" I asked.
     "Don't ask me," the Mediator said. "She is not a concern."
     "And why would you say that?"
     "Because you are important. She is not."
     I just stared at the imperious little furry alien in her gray leather roadcoat, jangling with blades and bullets. And I bit back a knee-jerk reaction. Clamped my mouth shut. Clicked the glass down. Hauled myself to my feet.
     Jenes'ahn just followed me with a flat stare as I stretched and then headed for the door.
     Pausing abreast of her. "You're wrong. She is important."
     "To you, you mean."
     "A."
     No-one can turn their nose up like a Rris, and she did so. Snorted. "Fool. You don't learn. You don't change."
     "Change?" I asked. "Change to what? To Rris? You haven't figured out yet I can't do that?"
     "So you expect her to change to whatever you are?"
     "She is exactly what she is. And that is why... that's why I feel what I do toward her."
     An ear twitched sideways. "Then I think I pity her."
     I sighed. Shrugged. "You were saying something about not changing," I said and walked, letting her waste any final words against the bedroom door.
     So. Another day. History lessons, a formal ball, and an assassination attempt. I ached. My head hurt. I reeked of smoke and gunpowder and sweat and fear. My hands were shaking. Hell, my legs were shaking. And I don't know if it was adrenaline or fear or just that feeling of furious frustration. The guards and the promises and... and a bunch of misled children waltz in and get themselves killed and...
     The human in the mirror looked out of place, ragged, exhausted. His fancy clothes were askew and dusty. There was dust and dried blood in his hair. The stuff on his face smeared when he rubbed it.
     I shed a trail of shoes and clothes on the way to the bathroom and stood under the shower for some indeterminate time. Then I dripped my way back to the bedroom and slumped on the edge of the bed. It was dim in there, the flagstones beneath my feet warm. Convenient central heating keeping the room warm without a stove or clanging radiators.
     I dropped my head into my hands and listened to silence. Warm, dark silence. Away from aliens and guns and...
     Scratching at the door.
     Reflex made me pull the towel over myself as the door opened a crack, then wider. Chihirae slipped in, looking behind her as she closed the door, then at me again. She stood for a second. "You're up," she said, awkwardly.
     "A. Barely. How are you doing?"
     She approached. Stopped. Rubbed her face. She'd washed; the dust was gone and her fur was damp, but she still looked disheveled.
     "I'm sorry," she finally said.
     "You shouldn't be," I said.
     She ducked her muzzle. "I was unfair. You had no control over what happened."
     "You were quite right," I said. "You were angry. You had a bad scare when everyone had told you it was safe. I think I'm feeling the same way." I held my hands out, clenched them to stop the tremble. "You shouldn't be the one to apologize."
     "They already have, a?"
     I stood. Taller than she was. She didn't meet my eyes. "A. A lot."
     "More words," she said quietly. "Why did this happen?"
     I could only tip my hands in a shrug. "I suppose it's all they've got. I think... his lordship is sincere. Others are against him."
     "Why?"
     "Money. Power. Gaining or losing it. All the usual?"
     She stepped forward, butting her head into my chest. I put arms around her in a reflexive action, then twitched back as I tried to figure out if it was the right thing to do. She didn't resist, and after a heartbeat I hugged a bit closer. Warm hair, blood and bone and muscle and a drubbing heartbeat.
     "They were just children," she murmured.
     Like her students. Like the ones she'd spent her life trying to help and educate before I'd appeared and... and that had changed. I hugged her, an age-old reflex of reassurance that kicked in before my brain had a chance to intervene. "Is this... all right?" I asked.
     A muffled pause before she stirred, "It's... not terrible."
     "That bad?"
     Her response might have been a chitter or an exhalation. "No. No," she said and then ventured, "But, you aren't aroused?"
     I blinked over her head. I hadn't meant it like that at all. "I didn't mean it like that."
     "Oh. Huhn. Sometimes... it can be difficult to tell with you."
     "You were expecting me to be?"
     "I was somewhat unfair with you earlier. You did protect me. I had thought I would apologize. I thought you might enjoy it."
     I scratched at the back of her neck, her ears. Deeper layers of fur were still damp. "Not right."
     "Hai?" It was a confused noise.
     "Not you. This isn't right."
     "Mikah, you don't..." she began. Then said, "What are you doing?"
     I looked up at her from where I'd knelt before her. "This is a good way to apologize, a?"
     "What?"
     "You're here because of me. This happened because of me. I should kneel and apologize. Like the way you do, a?"
     "What are you hai!"
     Whatever she was asking was cut off when I caught her furry hips, pulled her closer and nuzzled forward into alien heat and fur and salt.
     "That? Now? Why... oh, rot you, Mikah!" she choked and growled, snarling something else that sounded like a protest, then made a strangled noise and hands gripped my head and claws pricked my scalp as she yanked me closer and I was too busy to ask her to repeat herself.

Sometime late. Or sometime early. I wasn't sure quite when I woke.
     I lay in a tangle of sheets. A warm weight draped over my legs, breathing steadily, occasional snores rumbling like old thunder. But the air on my skin was still. Dark. Cold.
     What'd woken me? There was something. For a few seconds I lay there, washing back and forth between wake and sleep before deciding I was thirsty. The lump on my legs made a vague protesting sound as I extricated myself and swung out of bed.
     Dark. The gas lamps were turned down to glowing mantles. And the floor felt like cold stone when I put my feet down. I shivered my way over to the side table and the carafe there. The water was as cold as the room. The heating must've gone out. The last time it'd felt like that was...
     Last time was the intruders in Chihirae's room.
     Watch out for the cold...
     She'd said that. That... that damn... goddamn it. The thumping I heard was my heart hammering.
     Chihirae made a noise when I shook her.
     "Wake up," I hissed. Shook harder.
     "Huhn? What'ssstrdng," she muttered and I could see her head move, a glimmer of her eyes in the dark. "Mikah?"
     "Might be trouble," I said, trying to keep calm. "Might be. Put this on."
     "What?" she mumbled again and squirmed as I tried to wrap my heavy coat around her. When she realized what I was doing she abruptly sat up, lost in the folds of the armored leather. "What are you doing?"
     "Something's... not right," I muttered.
     "What?" Her head twitched around. "What do you mean?"
     "I'm not sure," I said, crouching beside the bed. Metal clicked as I checked the pistol's chambers. "Get down here."
     "Oh, rot," she breathed, scrambling to follow me.
     I hadn't paused for clothes, but I didn't notice the chill as I crept to where I could see down the hall. Pistol in one hand, flashlight in the other. I had a horrible feeling I'd see what I'd seen back at the Inn, where I'd lit up a hall full of assassins coming for me.
     Empty. Cold stone and ornate runner. The doors to the lounge, the parlor, Chihirae's quarters. A trio of gas lamps glowed fitfully in their milky hoods, just dull red spots along the wall. This was a mistake, a false alarm. There was nothing wrong.
     But that nagging feeling was stronger than ever.
     "Come on," I said quietly, gestured to Chihirae. And she hurried after me, the coat hanging of her like a child in an adult's coat. Her claws pattered on the floor.
     And with a series of almost audible pops, the gas lamps went out.
     A squeak from Chihirae. I froze, every muscle going rigid as the breath caught in my throat. Like being in a waking nightmare, unable to move as the blackness became absolute. And when what felt like an age later the flashlight snapped on, it just as much a shock. I hadn't even known I'd moved my finger on the switch.
     Under the electric glare of the flashlight the hallway was still empty.
     Until it wasn't.
     They came through the door from Chihirae's quarters. One, then more. Moving fast, but the light caught them by surprise. The first one stuttered to a halt, throwing up a hand against the glare and I saw bared teeth behind a glint of metal.
     Then:
     A brief flash of flame; a roiling cloud of gray smoke that filled the hall; sparks dancing like fireflies and for an idiot second wondered what had happened until the sound reverberated from the walls and slapped me around the ears and something behind me shattered. I yelled, backpedaled, dropped the flashlight which had just become a target. Perspective and shadows reeled as the light clattered to the floor and rolled to one side and I fired back into the confusion. Once, then again as I fell back toward the bed. Retorts slammed around the stone walls, physically painful to the ears. Someone screamed something in the smoke and chaos.
     Answering fire came back in a blast of buckshot that peppered the wall and drapes and a figure was in the doorway, moving as terribly fast as Rris can. I fired twice and I think I hit but the Rris kept coming and I fired again and the interloper went sprawling and thrashing across the floor and Chihirae screamed like a broken transmission.
     Another explosion of fire and smoke at the door. I returned fire and the pistol clacked on empty. As I switched to the second one I realized that if they got past that light and into the dark room I'd be in serious trouble. And as that thought hit me more gunfire hammered from out in the hall. Distant shouting. Dust and smoke eddied and drifted through the door, then lit from the inside with another flash and pellets whizzing and clattering through the room, making me flinch enough that I missed my shot at the figure who blurred through. My muzzle flashes strobed and lit the scene once, twice, three times. Third one might have hit, but then then the Rris was on me.
     I didn't have my armor. Or weapons. And it was dark. And the Rris was fast, fast, fast.
     Saw the backlit shape dart in, swing. I recoiled, back, trying to track the movement of what proved a distraction because the other arm whipped around and a line burned across my forearm.
     I'd never even seen the knife. A blackened blade.
     And I couldn't outrun or out maneuver a Rris. Grappling would get me shredded. Which meant I had to fight to my advantages. Of which there were damn few in that situation.
     "Submit. Die," the Rris snarled in the darkness. "Your choice."
     So, they wanted me alive. Or perhaps that was just an option. There were still gunshots out in the hall. More of them fighting a rearguard action? I'd be a hostage. They could walk out of there and what would... what could the others do to stop them? But if they killed me...
     "Not interested," I rasped.
     No reply, just a snarl and a movement in the darkness. Like that game Chihirae had played those nights ago, but this time... this time it was deadly dangerous and she was at risk. That was what my hindbrain was telling me. Woman, and protect and other instincts clashing with one another as I tried to face a predator circling beyond the firelight.
     So I wasn't expecting it when another snarling figure launched itself at my assailant with a squall that was equal parts fury and terror and teeth and claws. And she bore the other one over even as the knife slashed around and that was the opening I needed to grab an ankle.
     And then see if there was enough room to swing a cat.
     The Rris yowled and thrashed as I swung it around, then held tight and kept going, spinning like a warm up for a hammer throw. But this hammer snarled and kicked and tried to twist around. The knife clattered off into the dark as I spun on the spot, faster and faster. The snarls turned to outright yowls as I sped up, leaning back as the room whirled around me in flashes of light and dark.
     When I let go the Rris did what physics dictated, flying back and away and I swore it twisted and tried to land on its feet...
     Until it hit a wall upside-down like something out of a Road Runner cartoon, crashed down onto a dresser, tumbled to the floor in a jumble of loose limbs.
     I scrambled to the door, slammed it shut. No lock. No chair to wedge under the handle. But the wardrobe toppled over in front of it would make it difficult to open. And I could grab the flashlight and the pistol where I'd dropped it. Two rounds left.
     "Mikah!" Chihriae yowled.
     The Rris was stirring. Groggily trying to haul itself upright. Until its upwards-bound head met Chihirae's downward-bound water basin. There was a repeated gonging noise as she bludgeoned the assassin down again. Finally she subsided, clutching the dented pan and panting hard and stared at me with eyes that were black holes.
     "Are you okay?" I asked and she just laid her ears back.
     "You're bleeding," she observed.
     I was. Liberally from a gash on my arm, that was now starting to make itself felt through the adrenaline now I'd noticed it.
     "It's small," I said "Had worse."
     "Rot you..." She was at my side. "That is not small."
     "No time now."
     "Rot," she swore again. Her voice sounded like it was drawn through a rictus of fury or fear and I couldn't see her face. "Mikah, what's happening?" she panted, now looking at the barricaded door.
     The gunfire outside had stopped and there were Rris voices shouting. I held the pistol and flashlight, the pool of light levelled at the barricaded door.
     "Don't know," I said, shifting for a better angle. Just a couple of steps closer.
     A jolt through the floor, right up my legs like someone had struck the underside of the stones with a sledgehammer the size of a dumpster. I stumbled and a fraction of a second later the door blew in in a cloud of smoke and wood and splinters and dust and an impact that went right through me; masonry punched from the wall; plaster sloughed away in sheets like calving icebergs, crashing down and sending up billowing clouds of choking smoke and dust and there was a blow that thumped through every cell in my body and scrambled up and down and who was what and
     And I was sprawled on the floor, the ringing in my ears louder than anything else. The world was jumbled into dark and light and for a few crazy seconds it looked like it was snowing. Dust and plaster streaming down through a harsh spotlight. I coughed, spat a chalky mouthful and blinked muzzily at a doorway toothed with broken splinters.
     I felt that was important somehow.
     Lights moved. Figures appeared through chalky smoke, holding flickering lamps up as they picked their way through the broken door. I just stared for some long seconds, my stunned brain slowly rebooting until something caught and an adrenaline jolt hit like an electric shock. I scrambled backwards, flailing to find the pistol. Caught it up and then was confused again when a solid furry body landed on me, grabbing my wrist.
     "Mikah! No!" It was a tinny voice, just audible through the ringing in my ears. "Don't!"
     Chihirae. It was Chihirae. But, why was she stopping me?
     "Look! You half-blind lunatic! Look!"
     And finally, panting and bleeding, I did. Uniformed guards with lamps and weapons peering around the door and looking shocked and a soot and plaster-dust coated Mediator standing in the rubble with a pistol in each hand and an utterly stony expression on her face.

"It was a bomb," Rohinia said.
     I tugged the scratchy blankets a little tighter around my shoulders and leaned forward, cupping the heavy mug between my knees. The fire was warm, but I was still shivering; still on the downhill of that adrenaline ride. And the aches and pains were starting to make themselves felt.
     Beside me Chihirae was nursing her own mug. She was quiet, still bristling, blood matting plaster-coated fur over scratches. She lifted her drink and lapped, the thousand-yard stare not flickering at the Mediator's words.
     It was another room, chosen by the Mediators in the labyrinth of the palace. We'd been hustled there under guard; Land-of-Water guard and Mediators, none of the locals, and it wasn't a place that'd been prepared with me in mind. There was a stove, black iron and cream porcelain tiles, inhaling air with a rumbling purr and throwing off heat. There were worn cushions and old bookcases and dusty shelves packed with knickknacks and old paintings. And apart from the firelight spilling from the stove door, there was only a single candle for light.
     The wrap around my arm was sodden, the material sticking as the Mediators worked their version of first aid. Alcohol and sulfur powder and a stinging line of stitches while I grimaced and tried to sit still. Heavy bandages over what would be another scar. I was still shaking pulverized plaster out of my hair. And I reeked of smoke and sweat and gunpowder and dust.
     Then another wait through the dark small hours. Chihirae was still, withdrawn, not wanting to talk. I wanted to do what I knew was right: to hold her, comfort her, show I was there. But that was the gregarious ape talking, not the isolated predator. I let her be.
     They brought broth. We accepted and drank quietly. Until Rohinia returned and stood there like a dour sentinel.
     "A bomb," I echoed.
     "A," he said. "When they realized they'd failed they used it to cover their trail as they fled. Perhaps hoped they'd... done more damage."
     Chihirae flinched.
     I clenched a fist, feeling the ache in the muscles. "Let me guess: it was in the heating below the floor?"
     He paused. "How did you know? We wasted time thinking they'd used the balcony." "I didn't figure it out until too late," I sighed. "They got in that way? Why there? Why her room? Why not mine?"
     "They couldn't get that far. There was a hidden access below, but they could only get so far before the ducts became too small. There was a loose flagstone in the floor. It was well hidden. The explosives seemed to be smuggled in inside pieces of firewood."
     Fucking secret passages. I'd told them...
     He was watching me. "And your doctor didn't tell you?"
     "She said told me to be careful of the cold. At the time it was... just talk. It's always cold."
     "And you still consider her a friend." That wasn't a question, more a statement of incredulity.
     "She didn't have to say anything. And that was a warning. Not much." I flexed my hand — the cut stung. "Just enough."
     "Then why wouldn't she tell you?"
     "Umm, reasons?"
     He looked at me like I was an idiot. "But she didn't say a word about those fools in the hall.
     "Perhaps they didn't know about each other?"
     "We consider that most unlikely. The first were probably decoys. Expendable, even if they didn't know it. They made us move our guard and got in underneath."
     Yeah, that they had.
     "Perhaps they did it again," I said. "Perhaps there's another attempt waiting."
     "Which we are watching for," he growled.
     "Please tell me you were at least able to find out who was responsible."
     "They were from outside the palace. They had assistance getting in; they had assistance with their movements and access, so they left a considerable trail."
     Which would most likely lead nowhere. They would have more luck tracking down the young idiot anarchists, which was probably intentional.
     "And that one from my quarters? That's two you've got now. They any use?"
     A pause. "These ones were mercenaries. Professional. And deliberately ignorant."
     "Local?"
     "We suspect not."
     "Huhn," I said.
     "What does that mean?"
     "A foreign interest? Or out-of-towners hired by locals? If the former it'd be more difficult for them to fit in."
     The look he gave me was one you might give a dog that'd just presented you with a can of dog food, a can opener, and an expectant look. "The Guild is already aware. The local hall knows these grounds."
     I pressed a hand against the bandages on my forearm. The wound was stinging and itching at the same time. "Is it what you wanted?" I asked. "You wanted to draw them out. This night... was it what you intended?"
     A pause. "Not exactly what was intended. Things seldom are. But they have made tracks. We can follow those. It is what we do."
     I'd been told the Guild had a plan. I hoped they had a plan.
     "How many?" I asked. "Our people, how many?"
     A pause. "One dead."
     "Shit."
     "Minor injuries."
     I shook my head, which dislodged an errant thought. "Makepeace? Anyone seen her?"
     "Late at the university. She's fine. And we have more to do. Sleep, now."
     The Mediators were gone. I turned to Chihirae. "I'm sorry," I said, hopelessly.
     She lifted her head, looked back. Ruffled fur, a scratch, reflected fire shimmering in the pupils. An inscrutable expression and stare that was two coins of molten metal.
     "Chi, I..." I started to say.
     "Don't," she said. Just quietly. "Mikah. Don't."
     I didn't. Didn't speak as she flowed to her feet, clutched the blanket a little tighter and headed for the door to the hall to the apartment's bedrooms. And in that dismal light I saw the fear, the exhaustion, the anger and frustration and terror and everything I thought I saw I knew I was projecting. At that moment it wasn't a man and a woman, it was a human and a Rris, and I could only imagine I could imagine what she was feeling. And I...
     ... didn't try to stop her. Watched the door close with an icy block clenching around my heart.
     No slam. Just a click of the latch.
     In time the other door opened. A little. Rraerch poked her head around, then ventured in, tail flicking against Chaeitch's legs as he followed close behind. They looked worried. That was almost funny.
     "Mikah?" she ventured and didn't ask the rest of the question.
     "I'm okay," I sighed.
     "Your arm..."
     I raised the bandaged limb. "Another scar for the collection."
     They both stared, ears going back. "Rot," I heard Chaeitch mutter.
     Rraerch came closer, looking at me, at the fire, the room. "Mikah, this is... terrible. It's unpardonable. This will not be allowed to stand! There will be repercussions! The embassy has been notified and dispatches will be sent immediately!"
     I didn't doubt that. "That'll help?"
     She opened her mouth, as if to reply, then cocked her head as she studied me. I guess she'd been looking for a more positive response.
     "Chihirae?" Chaeitch ventured. "Is she all right?"
     I looked up at him. At someone who'd asked after her with genuine concern. "You're the first to ask," I said. "Thank you."
     "She's hurt?" His ears went back.
     "She's... She's... I don't know. Angry or scared or something else. I don't know."
     "Don't know?"
     I lifted my hands, let them, fall again. "I don't... know if it's something I can really understand. I couldn't ask." I clenched fists again, relaxed. Looked at Rraerch. "Can you?"
     "Me?" she looked surprised.
     "You're Rris. A woman."
     Bewilderment. "What relevance is that?"
     "That's sort of what I mean — I don't understand these things; I misunderstand these things. I want to ask, but I think I will make it worse. I am asking your advice. Please, Rraerch?"
     Firelight caught her face in profile as she glanced at Chaeitch. Her tail twitched, then she gestured assent, "Oh, rot. Very well."
     "Thank you," I said.
     "Huhn. The things we do, a?"
     She was gone, down the short hall to the small bedroom. Chaeitch sat himself down on the cushion, blinked slowly into the glowing mouth of the stove. "It's that bad?"
     "I think so."
     He growled, quietly. "Now, what happened?"
     "They didn't tell you?"
     "A. But you had a different view."
     I told him. And while he listened he produced his smoking pouch, pulled out his pipe, methodically cleaned it, slowly tamped weed into the bowl, his stubby, clawed fingers just ticking away on automatic. He didn't light it, though. That was considerate.
     And when I was done he sat quietly, turning his pipe around in his hands. Finally he said, "After that and you have to ask what's wrong with her?"
     The breath I heaved shuddered. The shaking in my hands seemed worse. "She's scared. I know that. And anything I say, any promise I try to make is a lie. I know that... But, is she afraid of me?"
     He stared. Then looked down to his pipe, turning the polished wood around and around. "No, Mikah," he eventually said. "That's... she's afraid. It's not of you, but of things like tonight. Can you blame her?"
     "No."
     "Then don't. Don't put this on her."
     "I'm not!" I protested, then hesitated. "Am I?"
     "Mikah..." He fiddled with the pipe some more, not looking at me.
     I felt that horrible sinking feeling. "I am?"
     Rris features weren't as flexible as human faces — they didn't wear their emotions there. I had to look for other clues in the cant of ears, the movements, the body language. That wasn't easy, but even I could recognize awkwardness. "You don't make it easier. She told me what you did — meeting with the doctor, avoiding the Guild, lying to the Guild..."
     "I didn't..."
     "You didn't tell them everything, did you."
     That wasn't quite a question, and I suppose I hesitated too long.
     "You didn't. You snuck around by yourself and just made trouble," he said. "They might have been able to prevent this."
     "You believe that?"
     "They could have had all of them. They could have followed them and the doctor, found out where their dens are. Found out how they got access to the palace. This need not have happened."
     That dug deep. And the worst of it was... I sighed. "I hate it when you're right."
     "It does happen occasionally," he said, tapping at the pipe bowl. "And is it true she warned you about this?"
     "In a way. I didn't know it was warning until it was too late. Words that didn't mean anything until I was in it."
     "A riddle?" he asked.
     "Not even that. Warning me about the cold. I didn't realize what that meant until it was too late."
     Some more fiddling with that damned pipe. "That sounds like a very bad way to warn someone. 'Hah! I did warn him, but the fool didn't understand.' She could have just told you."
     "And then it wouldn't..." I staggered to a top as my thoughts spun around those words. "Wouldn't have happened?"
     His hands stopped moving. "So, she wanted it to happen?"
     I shrugged.
     "But not for you to get hurt," he continued, staring at the stove. Absently he lifted the pipe stem to his mouth before remembering it wasn't lit. "Huhn, and we're right back to the fact that she could've warned you openly. It doesn't make any sense. Perhaps it was just a simple remark about the weather and you're reading too much into it."
     I considered that. "It's... possible."
     "But you don't really believe that."
     "No."
     "So, you say she said she's trying to protect you, but she doesn't warn you of a known danger or go to the Mediator Guild. That does not sound like protection to me."
     And I knew things about the Mediator Guild he didn't; I knew some of what actually went on behind the monolithic façade they showed the world; I knew they could fragment, bicker, operate without one another's knowledge. Did that mean they might have different layers as well? Could she be Guild?
     No, that couldn't be right.
     "Sounds like she wanted it to happen," Chaeitch finished.
     I blinked back to that skein of the reasoning. "And again: why?"
     He waved a shrug. "You're asking the wrong person. I only work here."
     A click from the door heralded Rraerch's return. We both looked around as she quietly closed it behind her, turned and stared at me. Her eyes glowed.
     "Ummm, how did it go?" I ventured.
     Rraerch heaved a steaming breath and came over to join us in the light around the stove. "She's upset," she said simply.
     "You think?" I retorted.
     "You blame her?"
     "Not in the slightest. But, she's okay? She's not hurt?"
     "Scratches," Rraerch said. "And memories she didn't want. And she had to fight an armed man and you killed people tonight and a bomb destroyed her room and her books and clothes and the things you'd given her."
     "Oh."
     "A. She's upset."
     In the awkward silence that followed the throaty breathing of the stove was very loud. And human conscience and instincts and conditioning made me ask, "Is there anything I can do?"
     "Give her some time," she said. "She will... manage."
     "Should I..."
     "You asked," she interjected. It wasn't quite a growl, but her ears were back. "She needs some time. It will settle. Just... give her time."
     I looked to Chaeitch; he was busy with his pipe again, not saying yay or nay. It didn't sound right to me, but what did I know. I seemed to do a pretty good job of misinterpreting so many signals.
     "Okay," I sighed, turning the mug around and around in my hands. It'd gone cold. "I just thought I should say something."
     "Why?"
     "Because it's something I'd expect," I said quietly.
     She blinked, cocked her head, then seemed to subside a little. "Sorry, Mikah. "
     "Not your fault," I said.
     "Nor yours. You shouldn't be apologizing to her for something you can't control."
     But was ultimately my fault.
     "I seem to remember talk," I said. "Promises being made; guarantees about our safety if we came here. I think we should ask for our money back."
     "Huhn," she growled. Then again, "Huh. There were. His lordship is... unhappy, to say the least. We've received repeated apologies and more assurances, but we're waiting until the Embassy has a chance to respond before taking further action."
     A scratch at the front door and everyone tensed a little as it opened. Rohinia let himself in and paused, looking around at terse faces. "It's quiet," he said, closing the door behind himself. "You should know: the Guild has been contracted formally now. The palace detail will be Guild, not guard."
     I looked at the others. "Is that good?"
     "It means the Guild is being formally asked to assist in this matter," Chaeitch said.
     "They will have more authority."
     "They weren't already?"
     "The charter is usually enough," Rohinia said as he wandered over to the stove, standing on the hearth between us. "However, Bluebetter is upset. His lordship actioned a Guild contract to protect you; to find those responsible. It allows us extra resources."
     I had to consider the obvious: was the Guild behind this? Another power grab? "Will it help?"
     "It gives us authority over currently foolish decisions. We will be moving you out of this warren to a lodge. It isn't as refined, but more defensible. This should have been done sooner."
     "And wasn't because... ?"
     "Because his lordship wanted you under his own roof."
     The meaning of that confused me, but the others seemed to accept it.
     "And speaking of which," Rohinia continued, with an expectant look toward me.
     "He wants a meeting?" I finished with a sigh. "What time?"
     "First thing in the morning, which isn't far away now," he added and looked me up and down: huddling in the scratchy blanket, underneath naked but for a smearing of dust and dirt and blood. "I would suggest some rest while you can. And perhaps a bath."
     "I don't think that's something you can argue with," Chaeitch said, hauling himself to his feet. "We'll see you in the morning, a?"
     "And we will get you some hot water," Rraerch said, following the others to the door. She paused there: "Give her some time."
     Then they left me.
     No shower or bath in those apartments. Presently a pair of Shattered Water staff dragged in a copper tub and jugs of water, heating them in a pot on the stove. And while they did that a Mediator stood unobtrusively in the corner, just watching.
     I did my best to wash myself in the tub while a Rris staffer ladled water over me, washing off the worst of the grime. Embarrassing and ridiculous to my sensibilities, but the truth is that without the luxury of running water and a decent-sized bath it's not easy to juggle heating and pouring the water and washing yourself. And for the Rris it was normal — it was only me that wasn't. But they were impersonal and professional and would doubtless gossip later on.
     The Mediator in the corner wouldn't. That was almost worse.
     The water was hot. Initially. It cooled quickly. The fire was hot, the other side... not so much. I washed quickly, not thoroughly, not lingering. Afterwards the tub was half-filled with a chalky slurry that could've stood up by itself, but the gritty feeling was gone and I didn't leave small clouds of dust when I moved. The towel they gave me wasn't as luxurious as the ones in the suite had been, but it was enough. While I dried the staff cleared the tub and other paraphernalia away under the careful eye of the officer. They bade me goodnight; the Mediator left without a word.
     The bedroom was a dark, unfamiliar place. It was also bitterly cold, my breath frosting and needling in my lungs. I left that darkness and retreated to the parlor and the stove and the comparative warmth. I stoked the stove. A couch would've been great, but there was a rug, cushions, blankets. I just lay down and was out before I could get comfortable.

Not a good night's sleep. The dreams were back, crawling up out of those subconscious places and telling stories that bled into stories I'd lived. Shadows and firelight intertwining and clawing out and touching me.
     I recoiled, from nightmare and...
     "Mikah?"
     The lamps had guttered. The stove was full of embers. A shadow crouched over me, hand on my arm and eyes like desert heat. "Mikah?"
     I sagged, breath escaping in a shuddering exhalation. "Chi?"
     "A," the shadow said, and leaned back a bit. "A."
     I opened my mouth. Shut it again. Fogged by sleep and confusion and my heart just starting to slow to a normal pace.
     "Dreams?" she asked.
     I nodded. "Sorry if I woke you."
     She cocked her head. "It wasn't that. And why're you out here?" She looked toward the bedrooms and her ears lowered. "Oh. Huhn, cold, a?"
     "A."
     A pause. "You sent Rraerch to talk to me?"
     "I asked her if she would."
     "Why?"
     "Because I didn't know what to say. I thought anything I'd say would make... would be worse for you. I thought she would be more..." I trailed off, trying to find the words, the mindset to explain. "More like a Rris?" was all I could find.
     "Huhn," she rumbled, sitting back and looking down at me. It was a considering stare.
     "Was I right?" I ventured.
     An ear twitched.
     "I wasn't, was I."
     "It... wasn't expected," she said. "Perhaps she didn't understand what you intended."
     I felt that familiar crawl of apprehension. "What did she ask?"
     "Other things," she said, "and left me wondering why didn't you come to me yourself? Come to me and promise and do all you did before?"
     "Because I was scared!" I sat, pulled the blankets closer. Shuddered. My arm ached, throbbed. "Damn it. I still am. I thought that attack in the hallway was their attempt. I thought they'd tried and failed and we were safe. But I was wrong again. And I was scared I was the last person you'd want to see with the promises I can't keep and I was scared I would drive you away!"
     She was frozen. Still staring.
     "All I can say is I'm sorry."
     Her ears flattened, struggled up again. What was she thinking? I wondered and in that instant realized that everything I'd said was true and heartfelt and purely and selfishly human in sentiment.
     My need...
     That woman watching me was thinking. Thinking as well as I did, but not like I did. Isolated hunters, they weren't gregarious, they didn't depend on one another for emotional support. By their standards my normality was obsession; a mental disorder that crept into their stories and legends.
     "So," she said quietly. "What now?"
     Now? "I don't know," I sighed, still bleary and aching. The stove had died to a bed of dull embers, fighting against the chill. Muscles protested as I stretched to grab a piece of wood from the nearby bin and tossed it into the stove's door. Ashes and sparks swirled. The wood slowly singed in the heat. I watched it:
     "The Mediator Guild has been formally contracted — whatever that means. His lordship wants to talk first thing. We're going to be moved to new quarters. It's just... I don't know."
     "You think it won't stop them."
     "I think they will try again. The Mediators say they can do more now, but..."
     "You doubt them."
     I shrugged into the blanket. Small flames were licking up around the wood. "I don't know enough about them. Everyone puts so much... belief in them. But everything I've seen shows they know about as much as anybody else."
     "History would disagree," Chihirae murmured. "They have influence, control, agents everywhere. They change countries, halt wars. Or start them."
     "A. And people know that. The ones who get caught end, but the ones that don't... they get smarter. Better at it. There're signs that the ones behind these attempts are highly placed. They have money. Perhaps lords, guilds..."
     "Mikah," she said quietly, in her school teacher's voice, and I stopped talking. "Again, you don't understand. The Mediator Guild is what it is because of ones like that. The Guild will watch, they'll wait, they'll know. They are effective."
     "Then why did all that happen? People died damn it! Why isn't there any sign of this effectiveness?"
     "Perhaps because you're only looking through your own eyes," she said and hissed, an exasperated noise. "There is a world out there that goes on without you, and they are part of it. They protect you, and you attack them."
     I stared. I knew things about those protectors she didn't, and I couldn't tell her. "I'm sorry," I managed to say. "I just don't understand them."
     "I know," she said, then stood. In the dancing light from the stove door I saw her ribs heave as she sighed and raked fingers through her cheek fur. "I know you don't. Rot, Mikah... sometimes you have to do what's right, a?"
     I stared back up at her, unsure of what to say. Of what I could say. And she in turn undoubtably misread that.
     "Just try, a?" she said, tail twitching. "You said you're meeting with his lordship. You should sleep. Maybe that'll help."
     She left then, turning and stalking out of the reaches of the hearthlight, tail swishing behind her. In the darkness I heard the door close.
     I laid back, listened to the crackling of the wood in the stove, and wondered what the morning would bring.

Crowds of Rris. High-born, merchants and guild leaders. Wealthy and powerful in their fields and in their finery and in the halls of power. Groups and individuals in the corridors of the palace that morning, all looking like they had somewhere to be. Also looking a little ruffled and harried.
     We passed by them. Myself, Chaeitch, Rraerch, Ah Fefthri, Rohinia, Jenes'ahn, and squads of armed and armored guards from both Land-of-Water and Bluebetter following Hedia through the palace halls. Various dignitaries were brushed aside without any consideration for their sensibilities, leaving them to bristle and protest in our wake.
     The audience chamber was busy that morning. Sunlight hadn't had a chance to burn the frost off the tall windows and skulked into the room, lighting it with a diffuse gray. Tables had been set up — five of them in a horseshoe on the green carpet. Rris were seated at them, a row to the left and right looking in at us. Some I thought I recognized from previous meetings, but their attire was also an indication of their status: high-rankers amongst lords and government and industry.
     Heads turned as Hedia ushered us in, watching as we were shown to the cushions in the center of the tables, set before that high table. Rraerch and Chaeitch and the Land-of-Water ambassador took it calmly and I tried to emulate them in that crossfire of impassive stares. But some of them had just tried to kill me and now I was being dangled in front of them like bait and I had to wonder if anyone would try to take it.
     But there were Mediators in there. And guards. A lot of them. Standing back along the walls behind those good people. Almost one for every dignitary, and they were all armed.
     So, I took my seat quietly with the others, watched my breath frosting in the air in front of me and tried to keep my breathing under control. The high table in front of us was unoccupied. On the wall above and behind were carved plaques. The central one looked newer than the others, all of which seemed to get progressively more time-worn. The ones on the outsides were little more than worn planks.
     Chita ah Thes'ita entered through another door, secretaries and aides flanking him as he stalked up to the center of the high table and stood there for a time, looking around the room, at the watching dignitaries. Impassive and imposing in finely tailored blue and tan tunic and kilt and gorget and armbands of polished silver. He stood while the aides and advisors placed armloads of papers and folders on the table and seated themselves.
     "Thanks to you all for attending," he eventually said and sat at the central cushion. Around the room I saw ears flicking and expressions that said that maybe, just maybe, they didn't all have an option. The Rris king's face was stone as he addressed the room.
     "It greatly pleases me to be able to inform you that Bluebetter has decided to accept the generous offer put forward by Land-of-Water."
     Utter silence, then a sound that could have been the drawing of breaths ready to protest. Ah Thes'ita was there before them.
     "We will join them in their ambitious project. A road of rail between our lands. It will require new techniques, new materials, new skill, and new ideas, and all of these opportunities we will grasp with tooth and claw and rend for the lasting strength of the land."
     A literal translation of his words.
     "This partnership will create a clear trail between our lands. Trade and travel will prosper, making us grow; making stronger. The innovations required for this endeavor will impact everyone in both nations, and they will stand us in good stead for the future. I take great satisfaction in ratifying this offer from our guests."
     On that note the aide to the king's left placed a sheaf of papers on the table before him. From the other side another handed him a pen. I couldn't see the mark he made on the paper, but the pen scratched elaborately for a minute. For one sheet. Then three others.
     I could hear it over the deafening silence from the rest of the room. And the tone of his speech... even I could get that. There was a message there, but it wasn't directed at us. We were the message. Or, more precisely, part of the message.
     A copy of the signed document was handed to Ah Fefthri by a steward. The ambassador accepted with a bow of his head. I got a look at an expansive sheepskin covered with dense Rris script, several seals of varying size and color, and the glyph of the king's mark. He gave a brief and probably ad-libbed response thanking his lordship and acknowledging the trust that'd been placed in them and praising the forward-thinking lord. I'm not sure anyone was really listening.
     Two copies went to the Mediator Guild. A representative was there, dressed in their ubiquitous gray duster-style coat, to acknowledge receipt and declaration of the agreement. Then smaller dossiers were passed around to the other attendants and voices rose in a growing hubbub and in the background his lordship stood, bowed, and departed and I realized that was it.
     Hedia was among us, murmuring, "Please, sir, ma'am, if you would please follow me."
     We left a growing hubbub behind us. Rris voices were raised in discussion and question and I could hear mixed opinions regarding his lordship's decision. Our Mediators fell in ahead and behind as Hedia led the way through another small door: a servants entrance. The halls back there were smaller and purely functional, letting staff move about quickly and unobtrusively.
     Another door turned opened into another room, a foyer with a polished wooden floor and guards posted before a set of larger doors that I'd seen before. Beyond those was Chita ah Thes'ita's personal study.
     I'd been there before, in that room decorated with untold centuries of Rris aretfacts. The drapes on the small windows were open this time, looking out over an inner garden still in morning shadow. Light filtered through frost and ice. Some lamps were burning, more for my benefit than the Rris. As was the fire burning in the grate. Or perhaps that was just to keep the ink from freezing.
     "Please be seated," Hedia said, ushering us to the polished old table and the cushions there. "His lordship will be with you shortly. He regrets that this was not possible earlier, but circumstances dictated. He hopes you understand."
     "Somewhat," Rraerch said. "His announcement was unexpected. Not unwelcome, but unexpected nevertheless."
     "His lordship appreciates you have concerns. He will be with you momentarily and can doubtless be more informative. In the meantime there are pickings, drinks for you."
     She left us and we hurried up and waited. The pickings, as she put it, were provided: smoked meat, some jerked meat, some au tartare. The rolls were fresh, as was the butter, even if it did seem to have a consistency of cream cheese.
     "This was not expected?" I ventured to Rraerch.
     "No," she said. "Not so quickly. We still have to examine the acceptance he provided, but I suspect it is favorable."
     I hesitated. "Is this a good thing?"
     "It is not terrible," she said and glanced around. At the Mediators and local staff serving us. It was a message I got.
     "A," I nodded.
     Eventually Ah Thes'ita arrived, heralded by arguing voices out in the hallway. A distant door slammed. He stalked into the room, grizzled and stone-faced, and sat himself at the head of the table. He took a visible breath and looked at me. "Ah Rihey. I am appalled at what happened last night. I trust you are all right?"
     I held up my bandaged arm. "Scratched, sir," I said. "And annoyed. And concerned."
     He tensed, very slightly. "I understand that. Your safety is foremost in our consideration."
     "Not mine, sir," I replied, trying to keep my voice level. "This happened right under Chihirae's rooms. It's her safety that worries me."
     "That has been noted," he said. "Your... interest was mentioned, but perhaps not fully understood. Other accommodations have been made available. The Mediator Guild has approved a hunting lodge in the palace grounds which they believe is more secure. Will that be sufficient?"
     "Is it likely to explode?"
     "Mikah!" Rraerch cautioned me and laid a hand on the table. "Sir, this has been a trying time for him."
     The Rris king tipped his head as he regarded me. "You are [beholden] to the teacher?"
     I tensed, glanced around at other faces who looked back with various expressions of concern, trepidation, puzzlement. "It's not like that."
     "Sir," Rraerch interjected again, "that's a complicated subject. Their relationship is... confusing. For us and him. And I believe this incident has simply exacerbated the issues. It is something I believe he has to deal with."
     He stared at me, not blinking. "Truly?"
     "It is an explanation," I sighed, not able to say right or wrong. "It has been a disturbing time. Assurances were made to me; I made them to her. Now, I have been made a liar."
     His pupils flicked to black. "We dealt in good faith," he said.
     "No doubt," Rraerch hastened. "And we understand the difficulties. Especially when others have ideas of their own."
     No change of expression. "A. There are always those."
     And Rraerch's face was a mirror. There was something going on there that I didn't understand — a second conversation going on under the table right in front of us. And I wasn't about to open my mouth and put something in it.
     "Nevertheless," she said, "we are appreciative of the decision you have made. Somewhat surprised by the speed and nature of the announcement, but appreciative. We have yet to read the details of the contract."
     "You will find them quite beneficial, to both parties."
     "That was the intention all along," she said. "Thank you, sir. We will read them. If all is satisfactory we will countersign and send embassy dispatches."
     "You have authority."
     "I have proxy," ah Fefthri stepped in.
     The Rris king inclined his head slightly. "As I recall, you haven't used many [favors] with us."
     "There have been few circumstances that warranted anything like that," the ambassador said. "This time, however, I believe it does."
     "Very good," the king said. "I believe you will find everything to your liking."
     And there was nothing in that sentence or his mannerisms that indicated he was in any way pleased about it. And I had to ask:
     "Why the sudden agreement?"
     He twitched his gaze to me. "Changing situations. Promises made required an appropriate response. And I fully understand that this will disrupt your schedule, aesh Smither."
     Which didn't really answer my question.
     "It is what we came here to accomplish," Rraerch said. "It is a sooner than expected, which means we had some more discussions and meetings intended. However, ah Ties has notified me that they should still take place — they do contain relevant information."
     "Important?"
     "Regarding time-frames and cost estimates and how contributions by other nations will affect such. So, yes."
     The Rris king's muzzle furrowed slightly and he stared at me for several long seconds. "And how would it affect this venture if something were to happen to ah Rihey here?"
     My heart thumped. Was that a threat? There was a very noticeable silence. Eventually Chaeitch said, "It would proceed. We know what is possible and how to do it. Mikah is an example that such a venture is not only possible, but profitable."
     And expendable now?
     "I see," ah The'sita rumbled, not taking his eyes off me.
     "His other knowledge is valuable. Unbelievably so. But..."
     "The Guild," the king said.
     "A. Beyond what we discuss is their business."
     Now he looked at the Mediators lurking in the background. "We will be able to petition?"
     "I understand that decisions regarding that are being made," Rohinia said. "I don't have the details available. Lodging a formal enquiry with the Guild would be suggested."
     "Huhn," his lordship seemed to consider that, then huffed. "Of course."
     Rraerch leaned in. "We understand that the Mediator Guild has also been formally contracted."
     His lordship's face didn't change an iota. "A. They will provide security. They have also approved the ah Seserita hunting lodge as suitable accommodation. There are quarters and kitchens and is mostly self-contained. It was constructed for the third of the Eritoth line, so while it lacks some of the amenities of your current accommodation, we hope it will meet with your approval. Staff are available to assist with moving baggage."
     "What isn't buried by rubble," I added.
     Around the table Rris flinched and his lordship stiffened. "A. Ah Rihey. We will do what we can to assist. This is a most regrettable incident and those responsible are going to learn that in the coldest means possible."
     He stood then. Sketched an outline of a bow toward the table. "Again, we thank you for your understanding."
     And he was gone. Sweeping out with the doors closing behind him.
     "Mikah," Rraerch growled, "That was most... unbecoming."
     "Well, it was quite impressive," I said.
     "What? What was?"
     "He got through that entire production without actually apologizing to us."

My quarters looked like the aftermath of a bomb site. Not a surprise.
     Doors were splintered and off their hinges. Furniture was toppled. Ornamental moldings and carvings had peeled and fallen from the ceiling and walls. Stone blocks in the wall between rooms had been punched out of true, creating a crazy-paving effect through the paint. Plaster dust covered everything in a frosting of sticky dust.
     That would wash out. That wasn't too bad.
     But Chihirae's rooms:
     The floor was gone, collapsed down into the hypocaust below. Windows blown out. Snow gusting in through the broken glass. The roof had come down, opening to rooms above and stone slabs from the floors up there had smashed into the remains of furniture. Everything smelled of gunpowder and smoke and dust.
     And where the bed had been was a pile of splinters and fallen masonry.
     I stared at that. Swallowed. If she hadn't been with me...
     Tracks in the dust showed where Rris had been. One such set led to a figure standing at the edge of the rubble, looking very small. I stopped, uncertain whether I should approach.
     "It's gone," she said eventually. "All those beautiful clothes."
     She was a teacher. A small town teacher scratching a living. Those were not things she'd known while growing up. They were treasures to her.
     "It's only things," I said. "They're small. Unimportant. You are not."
     "The jewelry you gave me is under there."
     "What? Those bastards! Oh, they will pay for that, the scabs."
     She looked around and up at me, eyes wide.
     "It's okay," I said hastily, holding up a placating hand. "A joke. Again, they're only things." And they might survive. They were lumps of metal, after all. Stranger things had happened.
     "How can you be so calm?"
     "I don't know what else to do," I said, shrugged down into the heavy embrace of my coat. "People were hurt. Killed. Politicians are saying things; making promises I don't think they know how to keep. The Mediator Guild is moving closer. Things were lost. That happened. I'm just glad that you aren't hurt."
     A pause. Then, "Thank you, Mikah."
     That was good to hear, but it was difficult to tell if her heart was in it.
     "I will do whatever I can for you," I said. "I always will."
     A chitter.
     "What?"
     "Idealistic," she said. "It's just... from cubs I have seen it so often. From you, it's incongruous."
     "I think I will take that as a compliment. Thank you?"
     She gave me one of those looks, then turned and headed toward the remains of the front door. I followed, through broken stone and splintered wood, past a waiting Mediator, out into the bullet-pocket hall where the guards were waiting amongst other debris.
     And looking at that elegant architecture reduced to wreck and ruin, I imagined his lordship would be only too happy to get us out of his house.

The new accommodations were indeed a hovel — a two-story hovel with over a dozen furnished rooms, guest quarters, indoor bathrooms, self-contained kitchens and pantry, wine cellar, servant's quarters, game room, ball room, library, and water gardens.
     Said hovel nestled in the hundreds of acres of curated wilderness surrounding the palace. In true Rris aesthetic, one would embark on a short, meandering carriage ride through what felt like a perfectly-curated winter scene; along smooth trails across white expanses marred only by the prints of birds and small animals; into darker woods where no undergrowth grew and unlit stone sconces every fifty meters or so marked the trail; around a corner to find oneself in abrupt sunlight, at the edge of a frozen glade facing the lodge.
     The exterior was a lie. It was unobtrusive, subtle, blending into the woodlands. In winter it crouched under a shroud of snow, wings spreading away behind screening evergreens. Perhaps it was intended to have an air of rustic humility about it. And in some respects it did, with extensive use of stone and timbers in the sprawling wings and roofs and gables. But as soon as you got closer that rustic air was lost in the scale and details: finely pointed stone walls, huge and finely milled trusses supporting the gables, interlocked columns on the front portico probably made from entire trees, glazing in the windows, the variegated slopes of the roofs broken by windows and tiled with finely-cut dark slate currently buried under white.
     It was disturbingly reminiscent of the inn at Three Birds Fall.
     Front steps had been swept of snow and ice. The doors there were big double portals, each painted bright red and studded with brass bosses. They opened into a hall that was all carved wood: oak and walnut and cherry. A grand staircase wound up to a first floor landing that circumnavigate the hall. Above that a three-sides cupola was glazed with stained glass, lighting the upper reaches with prisms of color. Wooden scent-sculptures stood between plants in ornate pots. In frames on the wall hung not paintings, but what looked like tatters of cloth or strips of hide. Almost garishly-bright rugs and runners covered the floors and demarked paths to the rooms left and right. Under those the wooden boards were worn by the passage of feet and time.
     Our staff had been through the place, as had the Guild. Guards were posted. Supplies had been brought in, baggage moved and carried to the rooms.
     "We hope you will find this satisfactory," Hedia said as we stood in the front hall. Myself, Chihirae, Chaeitch, Rraerch, and Makepeace, along with the lurking presence of Rohinia. "The lodge has a long and somewhat varied history. Ah Seserita was accused of excesses in the construction. There were considerable overruns, as well as several deaths, duels, and notable invigilation involved in its history. But it has proven useful when somewhere away from the palace is required. This way please."
     Up the stairs. To the landing on the left.
     "Trophies from hunts," she said, indicating the stretched hides in their frames hanging on the walls. One had hands. One had a face. "Ah, from a hundred years past. The story is that the contractor was padding her billing and skimming materials," Hedia said as she breezed past.
     "One way to keep the staff honest," I muttered, quietly horrified.
     "Mikah," Chihirae hissed. "Don't be rude."
     "What? But..."
     "Come on."
     I exhaled whatever I was going to say, closed my mouth, and followed. When in Rome, don't drink the water.
     "The western guest hall," Hedia was saying. "Host to many an illustrious visitor in its time. Perhaps not as elegant or as modern as the palace, but it has been refurbished and we hope it is to your liking."
     There were two suites in the western hall, another two in the east. The first was behind a dark walnut door decorated with a hammered brass depiction of an elk or deer being disemboweled by hunters with spears and small knives.
     "Ah Rihey," Hedia gestured graciously. "The Autumn Hunt rooms. The favorite of several lords. We hope this will suit your requirements."
     Inside, a small atrium with a servants' entrance opened into a main parlor.
     Different from the palace indeed. While the palace suite had been big and high and stone and intricate accouterments and artworks, the lodge was more intimate, and a lot more wooden. Carved columns supporting heavy beams. Polished floorboards under scarlet and blue rugs. In the main room there were more framed animal hides on the walls; arrangements of feathers and horns. Skinny copper vases of bulrushes and reeds. A big, iron stove almost glowed red with the heat it was throwing out, and in front of that were cushions and low tables. The ceiling was remarkable: interlacing wooden beams carved into deep three dimensional representations of branches and leaves, like a deep tangle of forest canopy overhead. And when you looked at the right angle there were carved wooden birds in there, peering back
     A half-dozen staff were waiting, standing demurely in line.
     "Your staff," Hedia said. "Aesh Haiser will be your valet."
     One of them stepped forward, bowed.
     "New staff?" I noted.
     "They are lodge staff," Hedia said. "They know the facilities here. And are very reputable, very discreet. There will not be an incident."
     So, was there something about the previous staff? Or were they just being careful.
     "Thank you," I said to the staff. "Your assistance is quite welcome."
     I think a couple of them were staring, but they covered it with more hasty bows and Hedia showed me the rest of the suite.
     Through a doorway to one side was a small study, with desk and writing implements. Another latticed door enclosed an alcove containing a bed more like a nest of cushions. There were wardrobes alongside. Through another door was the ensuite.
     "I regret to say that we were not able to prepare your rain in time," Hedia said. "There is a bathing tub. It does require that water is heated on the stove beforehand. If you notify your staff, they will be pleased to assist. Alternatively, downstairs there is a heated pool available for bathing. The boiler is kept stoked, so there is always plenty of hot water," she said. "There are staff available all at all hours: attendants, cooks, grooms, tailors... whatever you require.
     "Again, I offer apologies that these quarters are not to the standard we would wish to offer our honored guests. If there is anything we can do to make you more comfortable, please just ask."
     "Ah," Chaeitch spoke up before I could. "What is directly below these rooms?"
     "Staff lodgings and facilities," Hedia replied, a little brittlely. "Where Mediators and your own guards will be staying."
     "Ah. Thank you," he said. "This will suit you, Mikah?"
     "More than enough," I said and then turned to Hedia. "One thought though: there are four suites like this?"
     "You are referring to aesh Tehi? We are aware of that. I am afraid there are a limited number of suites of this quality in these wings. However, there is a residence where sponsored artists and writers have been accommodated for some time. The appointments are not as lavish as these and the Guild wasn't satisfied with the security, but it isn't an uncomfortable or distasteful apartment. And, of course, all the amenities of the rest of the lodge are accorded."
     I eyed her dubiously, wondering if it was going to be some grotty little garret hole.
     "Sir," Makepeace said. "It's fine. There's no problem."
     This coming from the officially nominated delegate from the University of Shattered Water who'd had to ride in coal carts, who'd borrowed clothes for formal meetings, and who'd saved my life. "Okay," I nodded. "If you're all right with it. You know where to come if there're problems."
     "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
     Chihirae was settled in the apartment next door. Chaeitch and Rraerch across in the east wing. In Rris minds that was how guests were lodged — not quite in the host's house. Or perhaps, the host wasn't quite in the guest's territory. It didn't feel like hospitality to me, but it did to them. It wasn't my viewpoint, it wasn't a human viewpoint, but it was the correct one. The entire culture was.
     I had to keep telling myself that, even as I was drowning in it.

I'd wandered the halls and rooms of the lodge that afternoon. There were a lot of those. It wasn't so much a house as a mansion-away-from-home. Not as large and expansive as the palace — not in such a scale and grandeur sense, but it was still a big building. The parts that weren't residential were substantial. I'd seen a library, conservatory, parlor and bar, dining room with a vast firepit and rotisserie, and a couple of trophy rooms-come-galleries. Those were interesting. The walls were hung with everything from animal trophies to old hunting weapons to artworks of various descriptions. I'd been wandering the gallery, following grooves worn into the thick-planked floors and trying to decipher the imagery in various pieces. The one I was looking at was an ancient-looking time-split plank. It seemed to contain a lot of red.
     "What do you think?" a voice asked. A Rris... Rraerch. She'd changed her clothes and it took a second to recognize her as she padded up beside me, peering at the panel.
     "A hunting scene, I think," I ventured. "I can't quite see what though. Pretty faded and flaking."
     "Huhn," she said, leaned forward, sniffed the wood. "Bear."
     "You can really tell from smelling it?"
     "The scent's in the wood. Blood, urine, bile... Faint, but... you really can't smell it?"
     "No," I shook my head. "That's not common, is it? I know you've got scent sculptures, but putting them in paintings?"
     "I know it was done a long time ago. The wood could hold the scents. Canvas... not so well."
     "Oh."
     A pause. I turned strolled along the gallery. Rraerch fell in alongside. "Mikah," she said eventually. "What do you think happened this morning? With his Lordship, I mean."
     "I think he got screwed over."
     "What?"
     "Someone did something they shouldn't have. I think he thought he had some control, and then someone proved he didn't. He was hitting back."
     "That... fits," she slowly acknowledged. "And his agreement to our proposal?"
     "That was sudden," I agreed. "If it was hitting back, that probably means something."
     "A. Perhaps it wasn't going to happen at all."
     I considered that. "That would... fit? He was just playing along with us? He never intended to sign just to see what he could get out of us? Or, did he have an agreement with someone: he doesn't sign and they give him... what?"
     "Huhn. Support perhaps? Backing for some other venture? Or perhaps they don't do something. But, Mikah, your doctor knew."
     "She didn't say anything about that side of things."
     "Didn't she?"
     "No. She said she was working for someone who wanted to protect me."
     "Why?"
     "Because I'm a nice person?"
     A snort. "Power or money would make more sense. Money most likely. What did she tell you about her employer?"
     "Not a lot. A woman, I think. And I think she may have been present at one of those functions."
     She flicked an ear, glancing up at a display of spears. "And you would still trust anything she said?"
     "I... don't know. She knew how to get into the room, but she didn't tell me that detail. Just that warning. But she can't have been responsible. She wouldn't have said even that much. Even if I didn't figure out it was a warning until..." I stopped, shut my mouth as eddies wafted silt away to reveal something in the murk. It wasn't a pleasant shape.
     "A," Rraerch finished for me, "It means she intended something of the sort to happen and didn't do anything to stop it. An attack like that against his lordship's guests... that's a direct challenge he couldn't let stand, so he retaliated as he did."
     I tried to sort through the steps of this ridiculous game in which I didn't know the rules or all the players. "Someone planned all that out?"
     "A. Someone who knows what they are doing; knew just what his lordship was doing and which way he'd turn. The Guild didn't know that. We certainly didn't."
     "So, he's Hostile? Dangerous? He's certainly angry."
     "Huhn, I think not. But he's not a friend. Don't forget that. It's likely he was out to get something from us and that's been denied him. He might try something else."
     I felt a crawling up the back of my neck and looked at the next display in the gallery: there were a lot of knives there. "Like what?"
     "I don't know. And we intend to be leaving as soon as is practically possible."
     "Really? Just as it was getting interesting."
     "What? Oh. Huhn. Really, your humor sometimes isn't. Anyway, stay close to the Guild. If anything should happen, they are your best choice."
     "That's not encouraging."
     "Might keep you alive."
     We passed a tall cabinet, front doors gridded with panes of wavy glass, shelves within covered with knives, arrowheads, small tools and knickknacks and trinkets. Including what looked suspiciously like three Rris skulls gazing back at us.
     "And the meetings are going ahead," I said, thinking about days ahead.
     "The remaining ones, a. Not many, thankfully, but we are obligated to conduct them. And they will be coming to us."
     Tapestries next. Faded scenes of a city square and markets and trading. "You have any feeling of who's behind this?"
     "Better to ask that of the Guild," she said.
     "I've asked them and got pushed away. You deal in this all the time and you know Rris and the possible actors better than I do. You noticed that his lordship might not have been dealing straight with us; that this attack might have been at him. I thought you might have some feelings about some of the others we've been dealing with."
     She looked up at the tapestries. Scowled, muzzle rumpling. "I can't really... Rot, Mikah, it's money and power. And half of those we're dealing with are concerned about one and the other half the other. So I would say almost all of them would have reason. Resolve and means, however, that's rarer. I'd think the ones with both would be old, powerful, and not willing to change."
     Like the prosperous merchants on that tapestry. I had to ask, "How would the Guild deal with one of those if they are found guilty?"
     "The Mediators have broken guilds before," she said.
     "How do you deal with a whole Guild?"
     "Not the whole Guild. They find the decision-makers; the ones responsible. They are removed. That can be damaging to the Guild, depending on how many, what positions are affected, but a Guild can be rebuilt. Do you understand this?"
     "A," I nodded, thinking corporations. "Guilds are across cities and countries though. Does what happens in one city affect them all?"
     "The Mediators are thorough," Rraerch said. "They know what they're after and they ensure they get it."
     I also looked up at the tapestries and their industrious scenes. There were merchant and bankers guild buildings depicted there, some I might have visited. Yeah, the Mediator Guild might have been thorough, but did that necessarily mean they were always right?

Our staff had been busy hauling all our baggage in and unpacking the essentials. They weren't trusting anything to local hands.
     My luggage had survived intact. Mostly. The travel-worn chests were further gouged and nicked by falling debris. One had a bullet hole splintering the wood. And a pair of pants had a new perforation. And some other clothes smelled like smoke. And I was still finding bits of plaster in odd places. Save for that, nothing had been seriously damaged.
     And I was still alive.
     So, in the greater scheme of things I'd come out ahead. Others hadn't been so fortunate.
     Staff in the palace servants areas had been injured. So had several guards, both Landof-Water and Bluebetter. Chihirae had lost... well, a lot. Any sense of security had been pretty well demolished, and practically everything she owned was buried in smoking rubble.
     So I was actually hopeful that I had something that could cheer her up.
     There was no initial answer to my knock on her door. The guards there said she was in, so I waited a bit, knocked again. Waited. Toyed with the idea of scratching instead to see if she...
     The latch rattled, the door opened a crack, a furry face peered out, then up. "Mikah," she said. She had to have known that already — Rris don't knock.
     "I thought I'd see how you are doing," I said. "The room's all right?"
     "It's fine," she said. Looked down and flicked ears back, then swung the door open. An invitation even as she turned and walked back into the room. Only wearing winter fur, puffed out against the chill.
     I followed. Closed the door behind.
     Her suite was similar to mine: the entry hall, the central living area, a study and bedroom and bathroom off that. There was more red in the color scheme: bright reds and oranges and golds in the textured wallpaper and paints. Abundant wood was everywhere and the ceiling was a relief carving: a deep three-dimensional representation of the sky, with interlacing outlines of clouds that shifted as your perspective changed. Over on the stove a large kettle was steaming gently.
     "Soup?" I asked.
     "I was about to bathe," Chihirae said.
     "Rris soup?"
     "Mikah," she hissed softly.
     "Sorry. Look, these were just handed to me. I thought you might want them."
     There was a small, wooden box. Gouges and scrapes through the fine veneer covering it. "Oh," Chihirae said. The jewelry gleamed softly in the lamplight when she opened it. She stared. "Mikah..."
     "I asked them to bring in anything they found. They just dropped these off. That, and this."
     The small roll of tooled leather was scuffed up, but then it always had been. For longer than I'd known her. "A few scrapes..."
     She held the battered little grooming kit in both hands, staring at it wordlessly, then she was against me, leaning in with head against my chest. I swallowed, leaning forward to nuzzle the top of her head. Breathing her dusty scent.
     Finally. "Thank you, Mikah."
     "I'm sorry. I owe you more than that."
     "Don't," she said and pressed a hand against me, gently but firmly as she stepped back. "Please, don't. Your strangeness... I can't think like that right now."
     Over on the stove the kettle was steaming.
     "Okay," I said. "Your bath. A. But, have you seen the bath downstairs?"
     "What?"
     "You want a bath? It looks better than those little tubs — a lot bigger. And you don't have to sit in your own soup. And you don't have to carry hot water from room to room. And I can do your back."
     She gave me a suspicious look. "What?"
     "Wash your back? It's difficult to do that yourself."
     She kept staring.
     "Just a suggestion," I shrugged.
     "Huhn," she coughed, twitched her muzzle to flash teeth. "That's all?"
     "That's all."
     She snorted. "How disappointing. Very well, let's see what they're like." Not as large as the palace baths had been in Open Fields, but a vast improvement over a small hand-filled tub.
     On the ground floor, in the lodge-proper, behind the west wing, near the kitchens. The room was a good size, lit with only a few dim lamps. Near the door was a lounge area, with cushions and a small low table on an expensive-looking rug. Sideboards and cabinets stood against wood-paneled walls. A stove was built into the wall there, a big thing of cast iron that was stoked from the staff spaces on the other side of the wall. It threw off heat you could feel from across the room. There were a pair of higher tables that I recognized as grooming tables — things like massage tables back home where Rris could get their hides tended to professionally. Beyond that little area stone flagstones became steps up the edge of the raised bath: a pool easily two meters wide which stretched to the tall mullioned French doors. And beyond.
     The glass in the lights of those doors was excellent quality: almost clear, putting only the slightest waver into the world beyond. When they were closed they crossed over the pool a fingers-breadth above the water to enclose the room. But they'd been swung open, so the pool was a single gently-steaming dark path extending out to the edge of the porch. Slender icicles hung from the top of the door frame. Beyond, off to the west, a show-white meadow sloped away to winter trees, darker and darker in the fading light.
     On that cold and still evening wisps of steam coiled above the water. Ripples spread as Chihirae lifted her arm and reached for the tray of grilled delicacies resting on the edge. She popped a strip of grilled meat into her mouth, sighed, and leaned back against me, chewing nosily. "Aren't you glad I talked you into this?" she rumbled.
     "Oh, ever so much," I said, inclining my head to her. She couldn't see it. "Your wisdom is exceeded only by your self-esteem."
     "Careful," she growled. "That sounded like you were giving with your mouth full. And you stopped scratching."
     Sitting on the underwater ledge running around the bath just lifted the top of her shoulders out of the water. Below that her fur was underwater, wafting like water weed as I raked the grooming implement through it, part of the kit that came with the bath. She growled softly and rolled her shoulders.
     "And it is easier," she said presently, "having someone else do it."
     "Your fore-thinking astounds me."
     She chittered at that. The first time I'd heard her do that in a while. And for another while we just stewed quietly in the hot water in the gathering twilight, running a series of finer combs and brushes through her winter coat while she sipped and nibbled and watched the sun setting. The air grew cooler, breath clouding, glitters of frost forming on the tips of her ears. I hunkered lower in the hot water.
     After another while she sighed, "Ah, company."
     A glow from the doors heralded the arrival of a servant carrying a small lamp rounding the side of the pool and stopping a discrete distance. "Sir, Ma'am, aesh Smither and ah Ties request to join you, if it pleases you."
     "Knew it was too good to last," I murmured. "So, tell them to go for a walk?"
     "That would be rude," she murmured, and stretched and said aloud to the staff, "It's all right. Show them in."
     "You look comfortable," Chaeitch greeted us. "We thought we should see what you two were up to."
     "He finds others' business more interesting than his own dullness," Rraerch said as she followed him and displayed a bottle. "We brought this as a peace maker."
     Jenes'ahn ghosted in behind them, silent and gray in the twilight. She stayed there, watching and listening as staff attended: taking Chaeitch and Rraerch's clothing as they disrobed, setting out more towels, fetching trays and glasses.
     "The next few days will be busy," Rraerch said as she stepped up and into the pool. "So take the moment while you can. Ashhh! That's warm."
     Chaeitch followed her, down into the water and wading over to settle along the underwater benches, deep enough that the water lapped their necks. The sight brought flashbacks of old videos of monkeys in hot springs.
     "Not interrupting, I hope," Chaeitch said, flashing a grin at me.
     "Not at all," Chihirae smiled placidly and leaned back against me on the bench, fur tickling as it moved in the water.
     "Your arm," Rraerch said, glancing at the bandages. "It's all right?"
     "Seems to work," Chihirae said. "Mikah was just thanking me for suggesting this."
     "I..." I started to say and her hand was in the right place to surreptitiously jab a claw into my leg. "I... I am certainly ever so grateful. And where did you get wine from?"
     "His lordship provided a case of some very good [pedigree]. An offering of his esteem. Or an apology. Perhaps."
     Staff brought more trays out to us, more glasses and plates of bite-sized food.
     "A meeting in the morning," Rraerch said. "That will be with the [something] Guild. You know that word? They make maps."
     Cartographers? That fitted.
     "Is it wise?" Chihirae spoke up. Her ears went down when people looked at her. "I mean: after what's happened, is it wise continuing these meetings?"
     "I'm afraid so," Rraerch said, sighed a cloud over the top of her cup and took a delicate sip. The sun was down, the sky a deepening purple twilight streaked with a few high wisps. "We're going to have to work with their Guild. For maps of this side of the Ripple Lands, for surveying and planning. Good terms would be desirable.
     "We meet with them in the morning. Afternoon will be Miners Guild. Also Stonecutters Guild. And over the next couple of days we have lords and financiers and engineers."
     "And you trust them all?" Chihirae ventured. She was tense, I could feel it.
     "No," Rraerch said, "we don't. But we have to work with them. And we do trust the Mediator Guild."
     Chihirae looked at the room where a gray figure stood motionless, blending into the background even as she listened. "Oh."
     "Not just her. There are other Guild members on duty now. Out there," she gestured to the dark trees, "and others closer to hand. I've been told that if we follow their recommendations they will be able to protect us."
     I felt Chihirae shudder.
     "You okay?" I whispered.
     "They will be able to do that?" she asked.
     "They seem sure," Chaeitch said. "They say it's easier to guard than the palace itself. Not so many means of entry; not so many people. And those that are here know everyone else. More difficult to get close."
     "So, safer," I said, stroking her side.
     "Possibly," Chihirae said.
     "Probably," I added.
     She grunted and reached for another kebab. "But we are leaving soon?"
     "A," Rraerch said. "Our objectives are met. Other meetings are done. These are... contractual. We can't avoid them. When they are done, so are we."
     Chihirae didn't answer that, just bit into the roast. I patted her side. And under the water, a hand that was leathery pads and wisping fur stroked across my groin and started fondling. I twitched, through my whole body.
     "But these will be civilized affairs," Rraerch was saying. "They are not wanting his lordship to do anything more extreme than he already has."
     "This sudden agreement wasn't because of anything we did?" Chihirae asked. And under the water her hand was... doing other things.
     "We... don't think so," Rraerch said, sipping her drink obliviously. "We believe his lordship had an agreement with other parties. Someone broke that agreement. This is his response."
     "What?" Chihirae said, cocking her head. "Why would he do something that could bring his validity into question over an agreement?" Underwater, her hand squeezed.
     "Which is why we think there was a lot at stake there. The Guild might know more."
     "I hear they don't like to discuss that sort of thing much. There's a lot they haven't told me. A, Mikah?" Underwater, her hand tugged.
     "I... uh... you shouldn't DO that," I choked.
     "A?" Another private squeeze.
     "There are things they don't like people asking questions about," I said, trying to recover some control. Chaeitch and Rraerch were quietly sipping from their mugs, nibbling titbits, and hopefully noticing nothing.
     "Like what?" Chihirae asked.
     "Trade business," Chaeitch provided, waving a steaming piece of meat philosophically. "You'd get the same reaction from any Guild if you asked about their techniques. They just don't talk to outsiders about a great deal."
     "But when we are their business, I get a little concerned," Chihirae said, and her hand did obscene things underwater.
     "They are probably the best option for finding who's behind this," Rraerch said. "Unless Mikah's doctor wants to talk?"
     "A, Mikah," Chihirae said. "Any more news from her?" I had to grit my teeth as she tugged again. "And you stopped brushing."
     "Ahh, no... no news," I said, trying to concentrate on the brush in my hand as her hand squeezed rhythmically.
     "Perhaps she hasn't got the new address?" Chihirae offered.
     "You might be scaring her off."
     "I'm so terrifying, a?" she chittered, then abruptly her hand released me as she stretched, splashing water. "Well, I am tired. I think I might find out what that oversized bed feels like."
     She stood, up to her chest in the pool, water streaming from fur slicked back and down. A frizzy head atop a gleaming-slick body, fur soaked almost black and catching highlights from the few lamps; a figure that twisted and moved in ways a human just didn't as she looked back toward me. Her eyes flashed opalescent. "You joining me, Mikah? Or would you perhaps like to stay and ah, relax a little?"
     "I..." I opened my mouth, closed it again and swallowed hard. I wasn't about to stand up in front of the others. "I think... I may... wait a little?"
     "Your loss," she smiled and waded through dark the water to the steps at the other end. Stars reflected in the mirror of the pool rippled and shattered as water cascaded from waterlogged fur — a glistening figure of darkness rising from the waters. Lamplight gleamed on slick her and attendants were there to quickly brush the worst of the water out, then patting and ruffling with towels, then more towels, drying and wrapping her as she walked away. Jenes'ahn watched her leave, then her head swung back to me. I think she smirked.
     "Not going?" Rraerch asked me.
     "I think I could just... relax a little," I said trying to settle back and hide my... interest.
     God dammit... "I think she's annoyed with me."
     "She did ask you to go with her," Rraerch said.
     "Did she seem serious?"
     "I think... she thought something was amusing," Chaeitch ventured. "So, she was teasing you."
     "A," I sighed. Thankfully they'd misread the scene a little, but I wasn't about to correct them. Jenes'ahn however...
     "So, who do you prefer?" Rraerch asked me.
     "What?" That jerked my attention away from the Mediator. "What do you mean?"
     "I mean," she said, gesturing with her drink in the direction of Chihirae's departure, "Real women, or women like your kind? Which do you prefer?"
     "What sort of question is that?!"
     "A good question," Chaeitch chimed in. "And don't give us that 'it depends' escape."
     I looked between them, back at the doorway, which was an inconveniently long way off. "Prefer? In what way?"
     "In a sexual way, of course. Who have you found preferable?"
     "Why would you ask that?" I protested.
     Amber eyes blinked at me. Puzzled. "Because I'm curious? I've heard they enjoy it; I was wondering if you do."
     I leaned back against the side of the pool. "Okay," I said, trying to gather my thoughts. "Okay, they are not my kind, so comparing is... difficult. With my kind, each is a person; each is different, but I understand them: their bodies, the way they think and act. What they will do. Everything feels right. And everything..." I struggled for suitable words and finally had to settle for, "everything fits."
     Chittering laughter. "And real women?" Chaeitch asked.
     Rris women, he meant. "The opposite."
     "You don't like them?"
     "I... don't not like them. Again, each is a person; each is different. But, they are also different."
     "So much?" she asked, laying back against the side and looking up at the sky through wisps of steam. The stars were coming out.
     "I can't take for granted what I can with my kind. Women here... they are... sharp. They bite."
     "A," Rraerch snorted and flicked an ear. "I remember that morning. She was sharp, wasn't she. Your back was shredded."
     "A," I nodded and reached for a drink of my own. The slug I took was ice-cold in the glass and burned going down. "Sharp. And stronger in some ways — less fragile perhaps, but also less..." I hunted through my three-year-old vocabulary, scrabbling for words again. Emotions — they never translated properly. "Less experienced? Adaptable, perhaps?"
     "What does that mean?"
     "Each time I've been with a woman here they are surprised by things I find normal."
     "Most seem to be."
     "I mean, things about their own bodies that I would have thought they would have known. And teaching them each time is fun, but..."
     "But?"
     "It is tiring. And then there are the stories and questions. The Mediator Guild is still asking if I am controlling people like that."
     "I thought we'd dissuaded them of that."
     "Telling the Guild what to do?" I raised an eyebrow at that. "I think their saying is 'trust but verify'."
     "Huhn. A," she grunted, acknowledging that particular point of view. "And how will they do that?"
     "I don't care, but I'm not having anything to do with it," I said.
     Chaeitch's nose wrinkled. "But if you could simply prove you don't..." "I'm not proving anything to them." I'd be damned if I was going to perform for a Mediator Guild inquisition. They'd tried that once and I'd hoped I'd scared them off.
     He laughed at that, chittering and popping another morsel into his mouth. "That really doesn't make any sense," he said, chewing noisily. "Your embarrassment again, a? Isn't it only making things more difficult? One might think you had something to hide."
     "Nothing to hide so nothing to prove," I retorted. "It's a foolish notion."
     "Perhaps convenient for someone," Rraerch said.
     "What?" I asked.
     "It is a foolish notion. But perhaps useful for someone who wanted to cause uncertainty about you."
     I took another slug and winced and shuddered. "That," I finally said, "is not a good way to think."
     "No. It isn't. But there are those who do. Best to remember that. And incidentally, you never answered the question."
     "Oh, look at the time," I said, setting my glass down and standing. In the middle of the pool the water was up to my midriff as I started wading toward the lights at the end of the bath.
     "Come on, Mikah. You'll make us think you've got something to hide."
     I stopped. Turned to them. Two hairy heads protruding from the steaming water, eyes iridescent in the half-light. Interest or amusement or something else again. And the night air was shockingly cold against bare skin. "Okay," I said. "My answer would be: my favorite is the one who is with me. Woman or Rris or woman or Human, I'll prefer whomever I'm with at the time."
     And Chaeitch and Rraerch looked at each other. Whiskers twitched.
     "You asked," I growled, prickling not just from the cold.
     "Mikah," Rraerch said, smothering what might have been a laugh behind a delicate lap at her drink, "that is a marvelously ambiguous answer."
     "A," Chaeitch added. "If I didn't know better I'd think you were being diplomatic."
     "Or truthful," I said, a little defensively. "You want me to say one or the other? Perhaps a comparison? One might be a fare that you are comfortable and accustomed to, and one a dish that is spicy and exotic?"
     "A? Which is which?"
     "Yes," I smiled. "And now I think I'm going to bed. And before you ask the next question: my own!"
     I waded back to the steps with their laughter and farewells sounding from behind. Past Jenes'ahn, leaning insouciantly against the wall by the doors. Close enough to have heard everything and probably understood nothing. She watched as I climbed out. Watched as staff were there with towels and hesitant pats at my hide. I thanked them — I didn't need the postbath desaturating ceremony that a Rris went through. I just took a towel and headed back to my quarters.
     No lights in the lodge hallways. A few lamps gave some feeble illumination, barely enough to take the edge off the darkness as my eyes adjusted. I cautiously negotiated downstairs halls to the main staircase. Some lamps burned there; some moonlight wisped down from the high cupola windows, just enough to help me climb the stairs. Turn left. And get the bejessus scared out of me by the Rris hides hanging there.
     "Gahh!" I said when my heart restarted.
     "They're no longer a problem," said the voice behind me. The gray coat blended into the shadows and twilight almost perfectly. The eyes didn't.
     "Not hanging around in bathhouses anymore?" I asked.
     "Watching you fumbling your way is more entertaining," Jenes'ahn retorted. "Although, I do wonder what the teacher was so amused about."
     "For her to know," I said, glaring up at the hides nailed to the wall. The door to the wing was a little further. There were a few more feeble lamps there, the guards standing duty.
     "She's in?" I asked them.
     "Yes, sir."
     I hesitated. I could knock. But I had a feeling there'd be no reply. She'd teased for a reason, and that'd worked. She got a bit of control back in her life.
     The Mediator was watching me. "Not going to her?"
     "She wants some time alone," I said and she snorted.
     "Now you're an expert?" she said as she walked past the guards at my door, leading the way back into my own quarters.
     The air was blood-warm. Staff met us. I was given one of my own robes to replace the towel. I tied it around my waist, flexed my wounded arm once or twice, and then followed the Mediator through into the main lounge. She was going through the rooms, checking the windows.
     "I don't think I need to be one to see that. What are you doing?"
     "Seeing that everything is as it should be. Seeing to your safety."
     I could see through to the bedroom nook, the windows there: small diamond-shaped lattices of glass looking out onto darkened woods. "Oh. Right."
     She poked around a bit more, then gave me one of those looks — like she was trying to figure out what I was thinking. "Out of curiosity, what would your kind be guarding against in a situation like this?"
     "My kind?"
     "You talk about your knowledge. What would a threat be like where you came from?"
     "Umm," I looked around. "Well, aside from killers trying to get into the place, I would think things like sharpshooters in the woods; explosives in a vehicle driven through the front door; airstrikes — explosives in flying machines of various types; artillery fired from small mobile launchers; poison in the air or the water..."
     She was staring at me as I ticked them off on my fingers.
     "I suppose it would depend upon the determination and resources of the assailant," I finished up. "You asked."
     "Sharpshooters?"
     "Some guns are effective out to a couple of kilometers. The glass there is... not protection against those weapons. Neither are the walls, really."
     "And explosives in vehicles?"
     "Common threat. They're not wagons or carriages — you've seen them. Faster and can carry more. They can be extremely dangerous."
     "A." She looked from me to the windows. "And your assailants have shown a propensity for explosives."
     "A. You found where they came from?"
     "We are enquiring."
     I sighed and had to ask. "Do you even have the faintest idea?"
     "We have persons of interest. They are being investigated."
     "Guilds, a?"
     She just gave me a cold look. "There are a few who seem to have ties to these incidents. Guilds and otherwise."
     "After everything that's happened they must've left some tracks. The people they've hired; the weapons. Follow the money, for Christ's sake."
     "You're referring to the explosive devices used?"
     "For a start. I know they're not cheap."
     "So you think you have an idea about those responsible."
     "I know a thread to tug on. What would it unravel?"
     "What we are doing is being very careful, Mikah. These are... special circumstances."
     I stood there, in a fancy robe the middle of that extravagant living area and faced the Mediator in her road-worn coat. "They don't have... protection from the Guild? Friends in high places?"
     "No. No-one is above the Guild. But we have to be sure that... we have to be sure."
     "So you dangle me out there and wait?"
     Her nostrils flared, muzzle twitched a fraction, but she didn't answer.
     "You're not getting Chihirae involved?"
     "Mikah..." she said, and then sighed.
     "You're not?!" I stepped toward her, clenching fists. "You said you wouldn't..."
     "And we haven't! She is there because you keep her there," Jenes'ahn snarled, loud enough that I stopped. Stared. Another snort and her ears went back as she walked towards me. "We have not involved her: you do that yourself."
     And that was... a slap in the face.
     "It's your own situation, Mikah," she said as she passed me, heading for the door. "I cannot help you with that. Good sleep, Mikah."
     And she stalked out, taking the last word with her.

I lay in bed, nestled not entirely comfortably among pillows and stuffed comforters. The bed was like the bedroom nook off the main room: hexagonal, slightly-bowl shaped. Okay if you curled up to sleep as Rris liked to do, but not so great for me.
     Lights were low — just a few oil lamps glimmering like fireflies, the open door of the stove casting a ruddy glow. Over my head the window panes were brocaded with frost. The intricate layers of carved branches and leaves composing the ceiling out in the living area formed a hypnotically complex interplay of dark and light, depths and shallows. I watched, not really seeing as I went through conversations again.
     Things I should have said. Ways the conversation should have gone to make me right. Over and over.
     And I was elsewhere. I was walking. Along a shadowy avenue of dark trees and the occasional feeble gas lamp. There was a figure walking alongside, small and sometimes there and sometimes not.
     "Can't always be right," she said.
     I knew her. But didn't really know her.
     "She's a bitch," I said.
     A shrug. "Doing her job. She seems good at that."
     "She's wrong. I'll do anything to protect her," I told Mai.
     "You would, a?" she asked. And I was walking. Along a suburban street. It was raining. Cold. There were cars parked there. Houses, with lawns and big windows and warm lights shining out. We were at a window and I knew who that was in there. With her family and the scenes of a normal home. Only that wasn't right — it wasn't the right kind of scene for...
     "She can come out here," Mai said. "You can keep her safe."
     Rain rattled and ran down the windows. Thunder grumbled and I
     Sucked a cold breath in as I half-woke. A figure was out there by the stove, crouched and rattling a poker. Sparks danced. I flinched and much closer at hand another figure detached from the darkness by the doorpost and eyes gleamed at me. "Just stoking the fire," she said. "Sleep."
     Against all reason, I did.

     Meetings started early the next day. They were held in one of the downstairs lounges, the room on the front eastern corner of the lodge; the one with expensive windows on two sides. There was polished wood, intricate rugs on the floors. Cushions of a skin-fine white leather were arranged in a circle near the windows, interspaced with blood-red lacquered tables. A copper hood was suspended above a raised firepit that might've been right at home in a blacksmith's forge. When the early sun hit that copper it threw caustic reflections across the room, rippling over walls and ceiling. Further back, an actual bar with shelves of bottles of all shapes, sizes, and colors stood along a wall. The attendant behind it was a Mediator.
     There were a lot of guards around.
     Hedia was waiting for us with the cartographer delegation. She introduced us. Five of them and they gawped like rubes at a freakshow.
     Reassuring in a way, I suppose. If they'd had plans or ulterior motives of some sort, then surely they'd have been better acquainted with their target. As it was, they came across as what I'd been led to expect: a small guild of geeky specialists doing a specialist task, and that was all they were interested in. Nothing glamorous or exotic, but they had resources that would be needed.
     So we sat in the morning sun over by the windows. It was cool in the room, but that sunlight took the edge off for me. Discussion revolved around the agreed subjects of maps and cartography and surveying.
     "There are surveys of the Rippled Lands," the delegation leader said. "Hundreds of years' worth. From the bay to the high passes."
     "What sort of detail and accuracy?" Rraerch asked.
     A pause. "Some are very old. You understand techniques may not have been up to modern standards."
     "Of course," Rraerch said. "But you have newer surveys, a?"
     The delegation leader gestured an affirmative. Charith, that was her name. Aesh Charith. The names of the others kept slipping through my fingers. "Of course," Charith said.
     "Older charts are updated regularly. Without fail. Quite often. Well, whenever funding is available..." she waved a shrug.
     "A," Rraerch acknowledged. "And supposing that it was, how long to evaluate what exists and correct and fill in blanks?"
     "Entirely depends on what we find missing and erroneous. And that would depend upon the area required. You mentioned the Rippled Lands. Charts exists, of course. Mertich, you know those archives?"
     "A?" one of the others twitched back into the conversation. He'd been staring at me and now looked like someone had blown in his ear. "A. Yes. Of course. The river route is heavily covered. The less travelled the trail, the less information. There are areas where we've been contracted in the past: the odd hilltop or pass. Those are also quite detailed."
     "Accuracy?"
     "Depends on age, budget, and the land. There are slips and floods. Even charts a few years old can differ from reality."
     "That's understood," Chaeitch said. "And a difficulty."
     "And are you looking for something in particular?" one of the others spoke up. "There are talks you would run a road through the Rippled Lands. That is an interesting challenge. You will be looking for passes? [gradient]? Geology?"
     "We are still exploring our options, but of course easier routes are preferable," Rraerch said.
     "And there was the other initiative his lordship has mentioned."
     "You're referring to the change in standards."
     "A. An... ambitious undertaking. Especially when we look at our archives. The time and cost of altering all those..." a cast-away gesture of the hands. "Does your creature have any suggestions of how that might be achieved?"
     Rraerch froze, almost visibly forcing herself not to look at me as her ears went back.
     "His name is Mikah."
     Charith actually looked startled. "Apologies. But, this is not a Rris. What is he then?"
     Semiotics again. A Rris was person. The word Rris was synonymous with it. If it wasn't Rris then it wasn't...
     "Himin," Chaeitch offered.
     "Human," I said.
     "That was what I said."
     "Apologies," aesh Charith said and looked at the Rris with me. Perhaps something sank in then because there was a duck of the head. "Apologies. There was no offence intended. We would, however, wonder how this... individual might suggest our archives be translated to this new system."
     I shrugged. "Are your measurements the same as Land-of-Water?"
     "The Guild encourages uniformity, but there are... regional disagreements at times. The step-wheel is popular in more open lands. I understand Land-of-Water uses the broken chain in their system? And the stride is not considered... [canonical]."
     "A," Chaeitch said. "And Bluebetter still uses the bucket system. I think that most other lands have had some strong comments about that."
     "A perfectly sound and tested principal that allows..."
     "Please!" Rraerch spoke up, the word loud enough to startle twitches from Rris ears. "Not the time for that."
     They subsided.
     "I believe that Mikah's point is that since no two lands use the same standards, any sort of collaboration is going to require conversion. On one side. Or both. That is expensive, time consuming, and risky. More chances for mistakes."
     "A," I said. "And even if you don't... a pitch of one-in-three in one measurement is not the same in another. Just using a notation like that in important parts would be extremely dangerous."
     Chaeitch waved agreement. "And expensive. Build an engine with socket threads at one pitch and bolts at another, and you will have to rebuild it."
     Aesh Charith shifted on the fine leather cushion, looked at her compatriots. Chaeitch picked a snifter off the table beside him and lapped.
     "And your new system would prevent this?"
     "That is the intention," Rraerch said.
     "And it will work in practice?"
     "It should. It's a simple, logical system. The greatest threat would be people."
     "In what way?"
     "A few. There are the obvious ones — feeling threatened or greedy or malicious. They do the usual and they are expected and they are obvious. But the others..." Chaeitch leaned forward. "Sometimes people claim to support an effort, but under their skin they feel the effort might fail. They may not actively move against the effort, but they won't put all their weight behind it either. So, it struggles and withers and eventually dies."
     One of the other map-makers cocked her head. "That sounds like experience shining through."
     "You do any grand works and there're always some," Chaeitch said. "But it's those ones that're the plague for anything like this. They're a sinkhole you're unaware of until too late. This project... everything I see of it is advantageous over the distance — beneficial and profitable for all involved. But, first we have to get there. And everyone will have to be striving whole-heartedly driving for the same goal."
     "Ah," the map-maker noted, "and there you get back to the foundation: profit." They all shifted on their cushions, sitting up a little straighter. "We're not a large guild. We can't absorb large debts, yet altering tools and charts and the way we've always worked, that promises to have considerable costs in time and resources."
     "A. Which is what the funding from our respective governments would address. There would also be some assistance from our colleague here," a hand gestured to me, "that should make things easier."
     "Assistance? This knowledge we've heard talk about?"
     "Some of that," I said. "And skills. From Smither Works, your Clockworkers Guild, from the Glass Makers Guild. They can produce measuring devices and techniques that might help you."
     Ears pricked up. "In what way?"
     "More accurate than the boards you use now. Faster. Save you time and money."
     The delegate gave me a flat look, then passed it to Chaeitch. "Is this correct? Is this possible?"
     "A," he said. "We have been working on tools for that purpose. Finer tolerances and better materials mean more precision. Some new ideas mean you can accurately measure the distance between points over a kilometer apart."
     "What? How?"
     Chaeitch leaned in. "Tricks with the glass," he said. "Tricks with numbers."
     The map-maker paused, thinking that through. "Ah Ties, with all respect, I find it difficult to believe that your people, without our experience or skills, could produce something that our best haven't been able to."
     "Again," Chaeitch said and jerked his head in my direction, "we have some assistance."
     "And what does this know about map making? No disrespect, sir."
     "Oh, none taken," I said.
     "A demonstration then," Rraerch said and looked across the room at where Jenes'ahn was watching. "Objections, Constable? No?"
     So I took the laptop out. Opened it. Found the prepared presentation and turned the screen for the map makers.
     They leaned forward.
     "Ah," one proclaimed. "A [magic lantern] show. I saw one at a market show."
     "Close," I said. "This is a map. You can see it is in real color here. You can turn it and go in close. Like so. And this is a high altitude view."
     Aesh Charith's head shook, like a dog with an itchy ear. "Hai! What is this?"
     "I told you: a map."
     "That is..." furry heads twisted and turned, taking in different angles. "That is not a map. That moves. And it shows... more than a map. Not a magic lantern either. What is that?"
     "And it is not right," another said.
     "What?"
     "Look. That looks like the northern coastline... western Land-of-Water. The hills there. The lake... that's Thief's Lament, but it's all wrong. Those lines? Those rivers?"
     "Roads," I corrected.
     "Roads? There? Since when? It's hills and mountains and more hills. And are those cities everywhere?"
     "Towns," I said again. "Look, were you told anything at all about where I came from?"
     A pause. "There were stories," the spokesman eventually said. "Many stories. From across the sea was the most believable."
     "Crap," I sighed and looked at the others.
     Chaeitch waggled his hand — a philosophical shrug. "Perhaps printing some pamphlets," he suggested.
     So, I told my tale again. And that took time. Quite a lot of time. They expressed disbelief. My voice gave out. Food and drink was brought in and I had some time to recover while the mapmakers stared at me. We continued. And by the time I was done the afternoon sunlight was slanting in through the windows at a completely different angle.
     The representatives of the Cartographers Guild exchanged looks that I couldn't read.
     "Some tale," aesh Charith finally ventured. "How true?"
     "That's what happened," I said. "If I wanted something believable I'd have said something like I come from across the ocean. But this is the truth."
     "Huhn. So, what happened to you?"
     "As I've said: I have no real idea."
     "And you can't return."
     "No." I shrugged in my old way. "And I'm afraid maps aren't of much help."
     "Ah," that one said and looked back at the laptop. She hissed softly. "You can show us how to make those?"
     "Like that? No. Not yet, I'm sorry. These devices are... the machines to make the machine to make the machines to make devices like that."
     She regarded the glass in her hand that had until recently held what was probably very expensive alcohol. It was dry. "Huhn. You are aware the Guild will have to deliberate on this."
     Rraerch waved assent. "Of course. You have your time."
     "Then we will go and do so," she said, flowing to her feet. "And if nothing else, we have at least had a most entertaining tale."

Steam curled from the surface of the bath. A few lamps were reflected in the dark water — just firefly lights that wavered as I moved. I sank lower in the water, leaning my head back against the edge to look straight up past the upper floors of the lodge to distant stars in the clear sky. God, I was tired and the water was hot and it was just so good to be warm for a while. I closed my eyes and just listened to the silence.
     Water trickled. Distant branches ticked and clattered in a breeze. Cold air nipped at exposed skin. Somewhere, far off, ice snapped and smashed. Closer to hand a voice said, "Oh."
     There were two figures in the room back down the other end of the pool. Standing there and watching me. In the dimness the smaller one said, "Apologies, sir.""
     "Don't worry," the other said. "He won't mind."
     And Chihirae shucked her breeches and tunic and stepped up to the pool. She paused at the top of the steps, cocked her head. In the shadows I couldn't see her expression, but her eyes flashed that cyan-gold eyeshine. Then she stepped down. And behind her Makepeace hesitated and was a little slower in disrobing and following her in.
     "You looked peaceful," Chihirae said as she settled across from me, just head and neck above the steaming surface. "Tired, a?"
     "A," I said.
     "Sorry to disturb you. Makepeace was looking for a hot bath and this is better than those tin pots in the rooms so..." She just gestured at the expanse of steaming water.
     "Enough room for everyone. Makepeace, how are you doing?"
     Makepeace had been carefully easing herself in alongside Chihirae. She twitched when I said her name, looked up with some water dripping from the fur of her chin. "Ah, well, sir."
     "They are treating you well? The accommodation all right? They were saying a small apartment was all that was available."
     Her ears came up. "Oh, yes, sir. But it's a sponsors apartment."
     They'd mentioned that. "And that's a good thing? A bad thing?"
     "Oh, most good, sir."
     "Mikah," Chihirae said. "Patrons will host their sponsors in places like that. They consider their sponsors and their work as representatives of themselves. They are usually generous. Such accommodation in the palace would be... sufficient?"
     "More than, Ma'am," Makepeace said. "It's larger than the suite in the palace. It's all most fine wood and rugs. There's a guest book! It goes back a hundred years. Sir, aesh Trish stayed here. As did ah Eshtha, ah Fresira, and ah Ma'asesitha. He wrote the Succession Observations here."
     That obviously meant something. And Chihirae looked amused.
     "Mikah is perhaps not as well versed in some fields as one might expect. Mikah, they're a treatise on the succession system. Everyone from the Mediator Guild to various governments were most interested in it. Quite famous. He wrote that here, did he?"
     "A, Ma'am. In those same rooms. On the same desk! And I found all these names etched on the underside of the desk. Old names. And there are other books on the shelves I've never seen in libraries. And artworks by ah Eshtha that I've only seen mentioned in a diary."
     "So it's all right then?" I asked.
     "I... yes, sir," Makepeace said, suddenly looking unsure. And Chihirae gave me a nudge with her foot under the water. "Mikah, stop teasing her."
     "But it is sounding like she's getting a better deal than we are."
     "Mikah!"
     "Okay! Sorry. What about the transport? You aren't still catching rides on coal carts?"
     "No, sir. There's a carriage I can use now."
     I was going to have words with her masters when we got back to Shattered Water. Sending her off with no real authority or experience or even money was something I wouldn't expect of even the most inept institution. But that wasn't the time or place for it. I just nodded quietly. "Better?"
     "A!" She looked almost pathetically relieved. "Most assuredly, sir."
     "And the work at the University?"
     A bit of a hesitation there. "It proceeds, sir. Although, I regret to say that their archives have turned no mention of anything like yourself."
     "That was a priority, was it?" Chihirae asked.
     And Makepeace looked uncomfortable. "There are some in the University who maintain that ah Rihey is, in fact, from a civilization over the sea. Bluebetter has performed more extensive exploration so they thought..." Her ears went down and she ducked her head. "There was nothing like that."
     "And aside from that?" I asked.
     "Well," she said. "You blazed the trail, sir. They are all interested in what you have to offer."
     "And how little they have to pay, and how much it will earn them, a?"
     Water splashed as she waved a shrug. "That does seem to be a consideration, yes. And the proposal for a new measuring system has supporters. Most are in favor of it. There are a few who are not, but they are quite vocal."
     "Usually are," Chihirae murmured and looked around as an attendant approached around the pool and set a tray on the edge. Small kebabs and shot glasses of liquor. For a while we sat in silence while a sliver of moon climbed and the milky way peeked around the roof of the lodge. The food was hot and spiced; the alcohol was cold and also spiced. Makepeace went through several of the meat treats and then discovered she quite liked the liquor. She downed her third shot and shivered, shook her head. "Makes my nose tingle," she said.
     "It'll do more than that if you don't slow down," Chihirae cautioned.
     "I haven't had this before." Makepeace studied her glass. "Is it expensive?"
     "I don't know. I suspect very."
     "Oh." Makepeace looked chagrined for a second, then chittered. "It is good, though."
     "Just so long as I don't have to carry you back to your room," I said.
     "Sounds like fun," she chittered.
     "Until you have to get through the next day."
     "Not a problem for us, remember," Chihirae said. And then had to explain to Makepeace how I could get hungover while Rris didn't.
     "Doesn't that take the fun out of it?" Makepeace asked.
     "You'd think so," I said. "But it's one of those things where you say 'never again' and then, the next night, you do the same again."
     "Huhn, I don't think I've ever done something like that."
     "Then you're smarter than I am." I raised my hand to my face, touching truncated little finger to the scar in my cheek. "I keep doing things like this."
     "You should cut down, sir," she ventured and promptly clamped her mouth shut.
     "Ah! A joke! Very good. The drink must be working."
     "I didn't mean..."
     "Don't worry," Chihirae hastily put in. "He's not angry. He's pleased that you're being a little less... formal. A, Mikah?"
     "That's certainly a more polite way of saying it," I said. "But, she's right: I've got to stop doing this." I flexed my damaged hand. "Remind me next time, a?"
     "Yes, sir," Makepeace dutifully replied.
     I sighed and I think Chihirae smirked.
     "Sir," Makepeace ventured after fiddling with her glass for a few seconds. "Is it likely to happen again?"
     And Chihirae was suddenly expressionless. Upset? I think that's what that denoted. "I... don't know," I confessed. "What's been going on hasn't finished. It may get worse."
     "Oh."
     "I've been told the Mediator Guild is actively engaged now. So whoever is doing this would be acting directly against the Guild. I understand this is... dangerous?"
     "Yes, sir," she said and her ears went back.
     "What?" I asked.
     "It's just... there are few precedents of people doing such. Very few. If whomever is behind this persists, they would have to be very determined."
     Or desperate. Or not concerned with Guild threats. That was disturbing. I tried not to let that show and said, "Well, the Guild thinks this will make it more difficult to find mercenaries to do their violent work for them."
     "I hope so, sir," she said and bit down on a chuck of meat. Chewed noisily. "It may at least make the journey home a little safer."
     "A," I sighed. "Only two days now. Plenty of time for something to go wrong."
     "There's something I'm sure you're ready for," Chihirae said to me.
     "What? For what?"
     "Do you really think his lordship will let us depart without a farewell display?" she said and flashed a grin at me that wasn't all humor."
     "What? Oh, rot. Are you sure?"
     "No, not at the moment. But it seems likely, a? I imagine it will be quite the send-off — nobility and finery and pageantry and food. You know how popular those affairs are."
     "Oh, good," I sighed. "A night of embarrassment and discomfort."
     "Nonsense. It's an honor."
     "It's a self-aggrandizing, trophy-waving spectacle with uncomfortable clothes."
     "You actually looked quite... imposing."
     "Good choice of words there."
     Makepeace actually raised her hand out of the water a little to ask, "They're so bad, Ma'am?"
     "Personally, I didn't find the last one so bad. As you've mentioned, however, Mikah seems to stand out and attracts a lot of attention. Not so bad if he were perhaps a little more diplomatic?"
     I'd also been attacked twice at events like that, although I hadn't mentioned that to Chihirae. I just grumbled, "Hey, I don't have time to waste or have to waste time with people who just choose to be rude."
     "See?" Chihirae sighed. "And he wonders why the lords [get their hackles up]."
     "So, do you enjoy them then, Ma'am?"
     Chihirae flicked an ear. "Have you seen one?"
     "No, Ma'am."
     "They are a sight. All the colors and the regalia; the lords trying to stand higher than each other and still not breach decorum. The lights and the conversation, news and deals from across the land. Mikah, if one does go ahead you must get her an invitation."
     "What? Ma'am, I can't... I'm nobody!"
     "And I'm a winter schoolteacher. Lords spoke with me. If they know you've spoken to Mikah they will speak to you also."
     "Imagine what they will do if they learn you were in the same bath," I added.
     "Mikah!"
     I smiled tiredly up at the moon. Frost was glittering in the air. "You don't know for sure there'll be one, a?" I asked. "I mean after the past incidents it seems risky."
     "Like that ball in Open Fields when you breathed fire on an assassin?" Makepeace asked.
     The silence was icy and too long.
     "You... what?" Chihirae finally asked. "What's that? Makepeace, what happened?"
     Shit. Makepeace looked flustered and I hastily interjected, "I think that's been taken out of..."
     "That happened in Open Fields? You never mentioned that, Mikah."
     "It wasn't important!"
     "How could it not be important?!"
     "Please," I almost implored, "with everything else that happened it wasn't!"
     And that wasn't the right thing to say at all. She stared across another silence, drowned by the drubbing in my chest. "An assassination attempt was inconsequential," she finally growled. "Mikah, what the pestilence happened there?"
     "I..." I choked it out. "I can't!"
     "It's so terrible, Ma'am?" Makepeaace ventured.
     "Makepeace," Chihirae said quietly, "you must've noticed things always seem to happen around Mikah."
     "It's... I thought... It's not just this journey?"
     "Last year Mikah went on that journey to Cover-My-Tail and Open Fields. And something happened. He returned with those two Mediators. And new scars and nightmares and secrets. They never told me what really happened over there, but he wakes screaming sometimes."
     "Chihirae..." I started, but she continued, just talking in a quiet, matter-of-fact way. "If they had any sense they wouldn't put him in these situations. But they do. Do you know that when I first met him he didn't have a mark on him. And now... he is a roadmap of misadventures."
     And Makepeace was looking as mortified as I felt.
     "He stands out, you see?" Chihirae was saying. "He has things that people want, or that they're afraid of. So, he's a target. At this moment it's quiet. Peaceful. But we're isolated here, and a ballroom is a crowd of people all with their own ideas. If there's a place for trouble, it's there and then. You see?"
     And Makepeace was very quiet for a while before she said, "A."
     "And sometimes the fool, the great fool, goes looking for it," Chihirae said, just staring at me with a look I just couldn't read at all. I felt like a scolded dog.
     "I do see, Ma'am," Makepeace said quietly. "And I have seen. As you say, Ma'am, he does stand out. And he did put himself at risk because of it."
     "Do you know why?"
     "Because he was defending me," she said just as quietly, shrinking down into the water.
     "A," Chihirae sighed, her exhalation mixing with the mist on the water. "He'll never do what he should do," Chihirae murmured. "The fool."
     She just inclined her head and squeezed her eyes shut, then abruptly stood. "Excuse me," she said water slopped and sloshed over into the drain as she pushed past Makepeace toward the steps.
     "Chi!" She didn't look back and I struggled for what to say, what to do, fighting instincts that were probably lying to me, that would only make things worse. Attendants met her, but she just took a towel from them and I saw her silhouette hesitate at the door and then she was gone. And across from me Makepeace's ears were flat.
     "Oh, rot, sir. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..." she said, looking as if she was trying to sink under the water.
     And I was trying to think through what had happened and how I could make it right, but what I wanted to do might be just the wrong thing.
     "Should I go after her?" I asked.
     "Sir?" Now Makepeace looked confused.
     "Should I go after her?" I asked again, gesturing in the direction Chihirae had gone. "Go to her. Talk to her. Ask her forgiveness. Tell her I... I am sorry. That's what they would want. Ask her what's wrong and she would say nothing and I would have to..." I was babbling nonsense to the bewildered girl sitting opposite. "I'm sorry," I said to her. Took a breath. "My kind would."
     "Why, sir? She went by herself. She did that because she intended it. She may return to you later, but for now..." she waved a shrug.
     "I shouldn't talk to her?"
     "She did leave. But a [token] of apology can be appreciated."
     "A... token?"
     "A, sir. You know, to leave at her door?"
     It was something I'd never heard before. No-one had ever told me, but then I'd never asked. "A gift, you mean?"
     "If you like, sir. But not quite. A gesture? Perhaps a recognition, or a favor. An indication to show your involvement."
     "Oh," I said. Now I was confused. I'd given her gifts before. Was it a right-thing-butat-the-wrong-time sort of situation? Was it...
     "So, a gift that is not a gift. I think there's something I'm not understanding?"
     "Perhaps not the same thing, sir." She paused. Perhaps doing what I did when I hunted for some way to describe something that was like breathing to me. "You plan your gifts, a? This is not planned. It doesn't have to cost. Sometimes just a thing, a... pine cone, a stone, something that is picked up that means something. A [something] of [affiliation/ apology]?"
     "Those words, I don't understand. Not a gift?"
     "No, sir," she grimaced. "A sign of understanding?"
     "You are asking me? Those words I understand, but the idea behind them isn't so clear. Giving, but not a gift. I mean, for example, what might be good in this case?"
     "I can't say, sir. It's a feeling you get, sir," she said and tapped her temple. "From here."
     And I wasn't sure I had that here that Rris had. Intuition was one of those places that were very different countries between us. And how could I feel what a suitable gift was? At the best of times I bumbled my way through the minefield that was emotional interactions with Rris. I relied more on their sufferance than I wanted to admit.
     A gift... a token of apology? Of sympathy? Of obligation? That word again. And I was coming to learn it didn't mean what it was supposed to mean.
     "Sir?" Makepeace asked. "She didn't know? About that incident, I mean."
     I blinked. "No, I never told her. How did you hear of it?"
     "On the way from Shattered Water. I heard guards talking about it one night." "Oh." Another story she would've heard sooner or later, perhaps embellished or exaggerated. But I'd screwed up. I was the one who'd let slip that things were perhaps worse than she'd thought; that the things I hadn't told her were worse. And was she angry or frightened or... or what?
     "I didn't mean to... do that," Makepeace said again in a small voice. I'd been staring blankly at her, lost in my own thoughts.
     "A," I sighed. "I know. It was... something I said. Not you."
     She ducked her head. "I think I'm relieved," she said. "But I also think I am the one who brought it up."
     "Perhaps you could help."
     A slightly wary look. "If I can, sir."

Sometime after midnight. Not quite entirely asleep, I heard the voices at the door. Then lamp-light in the living area. More low voices. They didn't sound urgent. I propped myself on an elbow, trying to see what was going on. The lamp wasn't bright enough to blind me, and not bright enough to let me see what was going on.
     "Mikah," a shadow stepped forward. Rohinia's raspy voice emerged from the darkness, "Her ladyship is asking to speak with you."
     "What?" I rubbed my face. "Chihirae?"
     "A. It's late, but she's asking.
     "Okay. Yes. It's all right."
     And his silhouette flicked its ears and departed, leaving the lamp. I hauled myself to the edge of the bed, wincing as muscles shifted — it wasn't the most comfortable of shapes for me. My spine didn't like the curve. I was sitting myself up when someone else said, "Mikah?"
     "Hi," I said to the general darkness. A figure shifted out there, just on the peripheries of the light. "Chihirae?"
     "Who else, a?"
     "A," I shrugged, then pulled a blanket over my shoulders. Even with the stove it was nippy. "I didn't think you would come tonight."
     There was a pause before she said, "Makepeace meddled a bit, a?"
     "It was wrong?"
     "You didn't know?"
     "About gifts or tokens? No. I'm not sure I still do."
     "Then what's this that was slipped under my door?" The shadowy form held up a small something. "Your doing? I thought so. But the writing isn't yours. Hers?"
     "A," I confessed. "I didn't know how. She helped. She tried to tell me about tokens, what they means to you. For me... I think it's one of those things."
     A considering silence. "I had wondered why your gifts tended toward the... exotic."
     "And I'd wondered why you found them remarkable. I never thought to ask. I can't say I understand. Makepeace said it's a... feeling. I can't do that."
     "Huhn," she said, turning the item over in her hands. I knew what it was — the cheap little bit of paper with the little cartoon on it. A doleful-eyed cub holding a candle and standing in front of the smoking ruins of a town. The caption "I didn't mean it".
     "I thought... I hoped it said what I couldn't."
     She held the card, looking over it in the feeble lamplight. I wandered over, sat myself down near the stove. It still threw off a palpable heat.
     "Makepeace wrote that, a?" she asked. "Huhn, I can't be a good teacher if I still can't teach you how to write."
     "Perhaps I can't be taught," I offered. "Everything that happens would indicate that."
     A chitter. "This is a metaphor, isn't it?" she asked, eyes flashing as she held up the card. "I mean, what happened there. You didn't actually burn a town down?"
     "Yes... a metaphor," I assured her.
     "But it was dangerous, to you and to the lands."
     I hesitated. "A."
     "So the Guild told you not to speak to anyone about it."
     "A," I said again. "And you know they're listening. Rohinia is right around that corner there. And there will be listening holes in this room."
     "Mikah, they wouldn't..."
     "They've done it before."
     She studied the card again, turning it over and over in her hands. Then she got up, came over and sat beside me. "Share that blanket?" she asked and I gingerly opened it, wrapping it around the two of us. She sighed and leaned against me, corded muscle under fur, hot as a summer night. "The Guild," she murmured, just a movement of air, "they're using me against you? Threatening me?"
     I remembered all the threats and promises that'd been made. And I just nodded.
     "Rot, Mikah," she breathed. "I'm not important, you understand that."
     "You are..." I hissed and she interjected:
     "Compared with you, I am most certainly not. Their only interest is that I mean something to you, even if they don't understand what."
     I knew that, but, "Oh, god, Chihirae..." She must've felt my shuddering exhalation. She leaned in, head on my shoulder.
     Eventually I said: "Dammit, Chi. Remember when it all seemed so simple? Westwater. The school. The children."
     "You have a strange memory," she observed.
     "You know what I mean — you taught me and there was only that little place."
     "And the angry villagers and smugglers and suspicious Mediators."
     "Pft, details," I waved something like a shrug and she laughed at that. "You taught me and everything was new and we didn't have to worry about the whole world."
     "I believe you had some problems. Have you forgotten those?"
     "And now I just get lords trying to trick me into telling secrets that could ruin their economies. I know which I prefer."
     She chittered again and her leathery palm pads swatted my leg, then stroked. "Rot you," she told me, then disengaged to crawl to the stove. Heat spilled out when she opened the door and casually tossed the card in. The paper landed on glowing coals, curled, flashed to ashes. I stared, about to say something before catching myself. She turned back to me, a dark shape, winter fur turned to a nimbus backlit by the glow of the fire. "You keep confusing me," she said.
     "Did I do that right?" I asked carefully. "Was that the right... token to give you?"
     "It... wasn't what a Rris would have chosen, I think," she said. "Some candle wax perhaps. A small stick or splinter. Some scent or touch of the world."
     "Oh."
     She came back to me, knelt before me. Then she reached up and slid the blanket back from my shoulders, letting it drop. She looked me up and down The open stove radiated a little pool of warmth, but on the other side there was a chill across my back.
     "Would you like some more warmth tonight?" she asked quietly.
     "I thought you didn't like the card."
     A couple of blinks, then a chitter. "I never said that, Mikah. An odd idea, but a good thought behind it. Like everything else you do — the intentions are good." She reached up, touched my neck with a fingertip. Watched as it stroked down, down to my chest, as the claw tip just touched. I shivered. "And now we're due to be homeward bound," she said, laid a palm on my chest as if feeling my heartbeat, stroked down my ribs. "This might be the last night alone like this for a while. That reception will most likely happen."
     "You know..."
     "Rraerch told me. The Mediators don't like it, but other people are being very insistent."
     "The one time I agree with Mediators."
     A light poke with that claw. "Mikah, they're trying to protect you. They are juggling a lot, and you are doing this again?"
     "Chi, you walked out on me two nights in a row. Now this?"
     A sigh. "I... was seeing you as a normal person. Perhaps I shouldn't do that."
     "I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I thought you were angry."
     "I was... frustrated," she said. "Everything I try to teach you goes... somewhere else. But you, you try; you give me something you think is right to try and be right and that just shows that I'm the fool for expecting different... normal. You are what you are you. And this..." her hand stroked across my chest, "... I thought you might like an apology from me."
     She was staring at my face, possibly trying to read me as I tried to read her. Beautiful amber eyes. Oblong pupils dilating, contracting with the changing of the light.
     I reached. She didn't move when I touched her face, but her eyes half-closed when I lightly scratched through the fur over her cheeks, down under her chin. She lifted her head, made a small noise.
     "You know," I said. "We're going to have to find something for Makepeace to wear."
     She growled, low and long.
     "Or," I hastily added, "we can just worry about that later."
     "Huhn," she huffed at me, slitted her eyes, then shifted back. Just a little. Enough to rise to her knees and deliberately unfasten the small kilt she was wearing. Lay it aside. Make a show of carefully smoothing down the ruffle fur of her thighs and then look at me. Look down. Laugh. "An interest there," she chittered, staring unabashedly. "Never ceases to amaze me: just doing this and you respond."
     She swayed her hips then, a parody of a supermodel's strut. Stroked her hand down her side, then her almost-nonexistent breasts. " Like those moving pictures of yours. Your females do this to you?"
     "It's one of their weapons," I said and clambered to my own knees, facing her across an incalculable gulf.
     "A?" she almost growled, shifted fractionally closer. "You make it sound like a battle."
     "A game," I said, touching her again. Stroking my own fingers down her flanks, the fur heated by the stove. "A very old game."
     "Huhnn," she did growl then and reached down, teasing and squeezing. "Perhaps we could play."

"You understand, Mikah?" Rraerch asked me over the steaming breakfast laid out on the round table.
     Morning sunlight trickled in through small panes of bullseye glass, the sun just a glow peeking from beneath a heavy sky. The pair of Mediators assigned to me were over by the door, watching. Rraerch and Chihirae were seated, genteelly nibbling slivers of smoked turkey. Chaeitch was demolishing a bowl of small eggs with a side of meat skewers. We all listened as Hedia finished relaying the morning news including the itinerary for the day. Now she stood and watched us expectantly while clouds climbed in the sky behind her.
     "Yes," I said. "A farewell reception tonight. Important. Dignified. Will it explode?"
     "Mikah!"
     "It will be secure," Rohinia rasped. "The Guild didn't agree to it until we were sure."
     I sighed and took a stick of jerky. "Okay, I do have a request. Please give aesh Tehi an invitation."
     "Sir?" Hedia looked confused.
     "Please ensure that Makepeace aesh Tehi also has an invitation for tonight," I repeated.
     "Sir? She's just a university functionary."
     "She's a representative from the Shattered Water university."
     "She is not specifically a member of your delegation, sir."
     "Then she's a personal guest of mine," I said. "Would it be too much to ask that she be invited?"
     Hedia looked to be at a loss for once. She actually looked to the Mediators. Rohinia gusted a rumbling sigh. "Liaison, this one is as inoffensive as it is possible to imagine. The Guild has no concerns there."
     "Very good. But, sir," Hedia looked like she was trying to find a polite way to say something. "The issue is that she is not... she is not highborn; not an official delegate. The lords attending may be... offended."
     "Until they find she knows more about me than they do," I said. "Then I'm sure they will be very interested in talking with her."
     She paused, considered that, then said, "Very well, sir. I will see that an invitation is provided."
     "Thank you," I said. "It is appreciated."
     She just inclined her head, probably biting back what she really thought about it. "Until tonight you may want to relax. If I may suggest, there are some fascinating pieces of history in the halls here."
     Chihirae leaned forward. "If I may?"
     "Certainly, your ladyship," Hedia bowed.
     "A groom for Mikah might not go amiss. Are there some capable?"
     And there wasn't any hesitation. "Absolutely, ma'am. They are available in the lodge. They are aware of the differing requirements."
     "Thank you," Chihirae said.
     "If there is anything else?" Hedia asked, and when there wasn't she ducked her head again.
     "Thank you, liason," Rohinia said and opened the door for her. "And if I may speak with you..." He ushered her out and the door closed.
     I looked around the table. "I need that?"
     "You need that," Rraerch confirmed.
     "Like a burst loom," Chaeitch added.
     "You could do with some attention yourself," Rraerch returned.
     "Now that was just uncalled for," he said.
     "And what about Makepeace?" I asked and looked to Chihirae. "She's got her invitation now, but I would be surprised if she has much to wear."
     "I think something can be arranged," Chihirae said.
     I took another look — she seemed very composed. "You've got something in mind?"
     "Something," she flashed teeth at me.
     "All right, then," Rraerch proclaimed and clapped her hands together. "A plan for the day. Packing for travel will be attended to. Sort out what you require for tonight. Mikah, we will advise you on that and close your mouth because that is final. There will be grooming and dressing and a carriage for transport to the palace. That is simple enough, a?"
     "Agreed," most said.
     "Mikah?" Rraerch waited.
     "I'd like to go on record as saying I can dress myself."
     "Noted," she said and kept staring at me. "And?"
     "Agreed," I grumped.
     "Hai, very good. So there will be carriages to the Palace before the reception. There will be a meeting with his lordship. He is most angry. Not necessarily at us, but at what's happened here which may reflect back on him and his abilities. So we don't want to do anything to exacerbate his mood. We will meet him. We will be polite and respectful. We will attend the reception and there will be no difficulties. A?"
     As one, all heads turned to me.
     "What?"

Rraerch was staring at me from across the carriage. She cocked her head one way, then the other.
     "Something wrong?" I asked.
     Beside her, Jenes'ahn glanced away from where she'd been gazing out the window; didn't see anything that concerned her and returned to her watch. Rraerch though, she blinked. "No. No, not wrong. You look better. The grooms did a good job."
     They'd probably done the most careful work they'd done in their lives. They'd been punctual and professional. They'd also been nervous as hell — I wasn't exactly a conventional client, and there'd also been a pair of Mediators in the room, watching over everything they'd done. From the second they'd sat me down on the mat to the final brushing of loose hair the Mediators had hovered close by.
     They'd done their work. My beard was trimmed, clipped and sharp. Muttonchops jutted like Rris cheek-tufts. They hadn't really known how to deal with my hair, so they'd shaved back the scraggly stuff and trimmed and brushed the rest. I'd wanted to tie it back, but had been advised to leave it loose. I looked more 'normal' like that.
     The clothes had been an advisory as well. The dark blue tunic was edged with silver brocade and frogging, hanging down over dark green breeches tied with silver where they tucked into my boots. The frock coat was blue, the silver brocade around the sleeves edging down to a sort of metallic lacework at the cuffs. The collar was stiff, standing up so my hair kept catching if I tried to turn my head. And the damn thing hung down to my knees and was almost as heavy as my armored brigandine coat. Warm, though, and that might prove welcome on that evening.
     The sun was westering, a bright orange eye on the horizon peeking through the crack beneath the gun-grey blanket a freezing northerly was drawing southwards across the world. Last light stroked high points, the rest fading into purple twilight so the carriage was rolling through a landscape of snow and shadows. Skeletal trees bowed around us. Gusts of windblown ice curled past. Every so often the carriage passed a marker stone on the trail where a single small lantern struggled against the elements. Some poor Rris would've had the job of keeping those lit.
     "I'd have preferred something a little more comfortable," I said.
     "Comfort isn't the objective," she said. "You should look like you're actually important."
     "I thought I stood out enough."
     "There's a difference between a dignified presence and standing out like a wandering troupes' painted llama."
     I looked down at myself. "Which am I supposed to be again?"
     She sighed. "I told you: you look fine."
     "If you say so. And Chihirae is okay?"
     A snort. "We told you: she is handling things. She's offering some assistance to Makepeace. They'll be there. When his Lordship is finished with you."
     "You make it sound like something to look forward to."
     "Huhn," she growled, then leaned forward, elbows on knees and hands hanging between her legs. "What I said before, Mikah. His Lordship is furious. He's had to deal with people he would rather not, and reevaluate his position with others he trusted, so he's angry. Don't give him another target, a?"
     I sighed. "A."
     She cocked her head again. "Mikah, why do you dislike these events so much anyway? They're supposed to be at least somewhat enjoyable. You just seem to be angry about them. They're really such an imposition?"
     That was something I simply hadn't been expecting. I froze, trying to understand what was behind that. And then I had to laugh and her ears went back at the sound in the cab. Jenes'ahn also twitched around, eyes black. "You think I'm... angry?" I choked.
     "Aren't you?"
     "Rraerch," I caught my breath, shuddered. "These things... they are... they're utterly terrifying."

We drew up in a small walled courtyard. On one side the walls of the palace loomed overhead, on the other a row stable doors were closed against the night. Flagstones had been swept of snow, but fresh drifts were being strewn around by eddies. A few lanterns remained lit in the freezing wind.
     "It can't be that bad," Rraerch was saying as she climbed out ahead of me.
     I sighed as I followed her, listening to her stuck in the same groove she'd been in for the past few minutes: trying to tell me what I felt wasn't what I felt. "You're probably right."
     "There. You understand."
     "A. I'm probably not terrified, I just feel that way."
     "That's what..." She stopped. I stopped. Everyone in our escort stopped. She turned to me. "That's not..." she started and faltered, looked past me at Jenes'ahn. "I didn't mean that."
     "I did."
     Wind tugged at her cloak. The dark blue almost lost in the dimness, but the silver threads threw back traceries of lamplights. Beneath that was more silver: filigree and fabricfine mail setting precious stones of greens and blues. All terribly striking, terribly expensive. Rraerch was a lord in her own right. I forgot that sometimes.
     And her eyes reflected light in an abalone blue-green shimmer as she stared at me for a few seconds. "Rot, you're serious, aren't you."
     I didn't say anything.
     She grimaced, muzzle rumpling and teeth flashing momentarily. "Rot. Not the place for this. Come along."
     Mediators and guards escorted us the short distance to a side entrance and then into a vestibule. More guards led from there, escorting us through halls that were at first functional, and then into more exclusive territory. I recognized those places, the halls, the foyer with the polished wooden floor, the doors.
     The Bluebetter king was in his study surrounded by that collection of items spanning centuries. I had no idea if they were valuable or just knickknacks. The drapes were closed against the winter winds. Lamps were lit, hazed in their own smoke. And Chita ah Thes'ita was standing in front of a polished silver mirror, his arms held out while a tailor wielding a pincushion fussed and made final adjustments to his lordship's attire. In opposite corners a pair of the king's guard stood at ease, watching the tailor, watching us.
     The eyes of the king's reflection flashed as we entered and he just nodded a single acknowledgement. So we waited a minute. I studied some of the artifacts and antiques adorning the shelves and cabinets of the room: small figurines of soft stone smoothed into almost shapeless lumps by time; fragments of wood likewise time-worn; arrowheads of black glass; little copper bells hanging from a string; a mask of a Rris face chiseled from what looked like granite with brass reflectors behind the eyes. The whole mask was covered in tiny renditions of Rris script.
     "Mikah!" Rraerch hissed and I had to focus on the moment. The tailor had hurriedly finished up and was packing pins and scissors away into a carpetbag. Jenes'ahn closed the door after him and took up station to one side, impassive as that carved face.
     "Aesh Smither. Ah Rihey," the Rris king turned to greet us. Tan and blue, the colors of Bluebetter. The tan was fine leather and linen — a linen tunic of tan and lapis blue and brown under a tooled leather vest of darker brown. Leather straps wound down through the fur of his arm to solid leather bracers tooled and carved like the vest. A leather kilt of a similar shade hung to his knees, from there leather wrappings like stylized greaves down to the odd Rris ankles. Not nearly as impressive or ostentatious as some of the attire I'd seen at previous events.
     But, the leather looked old. Ceremonial? Symbolic? No, the Rris didn't tend to do that. But it probably had some sort of meaning.
     "Please. Sit," the king said, and it wasn't just a suggestion. "I trust you are finding the lodge a suitable alternative?"
     "It is most adequate," Rraerch said as she carefully seated herself on one of the ancient cushions at the desk, carefully letting her cloak drape. "Isn't it, Mikah."
     "A," I caught the hint as I seated myself just as carefully, spreading coat tails before sitting. "I have no complaints, sir. If anything it's a little more... um... livable than the Palace. A more personal scale, if that makes sense."
     His highness raised his head a fraction, eyeing me. "It does. This monstrosity is for show, not for living in. One rattles around here like a bat in a cave. But, the higher one stands the colder the wind, a?"
     I hadn't heard that one before.
     "I spent my own time there, you know. As a candidate we stayed in the lodges. I grew up in those very halls. I studied at the same desk ah Ma'asesitha once used."
     I almost laughed at that. "Left your name on it, a?" I asked.
     Ah Thes'ita didn't even blink. "Now how did you know that?"
     "Lucky guess?" I said.
     "Somehow, I think not," he said. "Perhaps your university representative would know, a?"
     "Perhaps," I conceded. "She did say there's quite a list on that desk."
     I think Rraerch made a small noise. The Rris king just gave me that expressionless look, then huffed, brushed down some fur on his forearm. "Quite. Now, perhaps on to more pressing matters."
     He stalked over to a sideboard. Glass tinkled on glass. "This evening will be... delicate. Attendees have been invited. They are favored by the palace and we have no reason to doubt their sincerity. At this time."
     He turned, bearing a couple of small, wide glasses on trays. He returned to the desk, set the tray down and then seated himself before sliding the tray over toward us. The guards' heads in the background tracked Rraerch like smart turrets as she leaned forward to accept them. Sniffed, and handed one to me. A freezing cold glass filled with a clear and oily liquor.
     "The Guild investigation is ongoing," ah Thes'ita continued. "They've advised us to maintain normal appearances. Therefore the guest list is a usual one."
     "The usual," Rraerch noted. "You mean everyone."
     "A. Lords, patrons, favored guilds and highborn and merchants. The Guild requested all the expected to be invited."
     "Including those who may be behind the attempts on Mikah's life."
     "A."
     "And they know who they are?"
     "All they will say is that, 'the investigation is ongoing'."
     "Huhnn," Rraerch huffed. "They are aware that that puts Mikah at risk."
     "I believe so. They don't want to startle their quarry into hiding deeper in the thickets."
     "If they're as capable as they seem, they'll know full well the Guild is involved."
     I glanced toward our shadow standing guard at the door. Eyeshine coruscated — that meant she was watching me. I understood that.
     I sipped from the glass, the freezing glass conspiring with the liquor that burned my throat. Yeah, the Guild knew it put me at risk. It didn't matter to them: either I flushed their prey out, or their prey removed a thorn from their paws.
     "And you are concerned."
     "Sir, I have to confess that I am. Extremely."
     "We are taking precautions and care. The invitation is broad, true, but the list of those allowed to approach ah Rihey has been vetted most meticulously. There are only a few who have been given permission to approach. There will be guards."
     There always were.
     "Mikah? Do you understand this?" Rraerch was looking at me. "You are... comfortable with it?"
     "I believe I told you how I feel about this earlier," I said, feeling that brittle tension of banked fear flickering down inside. "But, we must do what we must do, a?"
     She sighed. "Thank you. Sir, may I see this list of worthies?"
     The Rris king waved a gracious acknowledgement and took a single sheet of paper from atop a stack on his desk. Slid it over to her. She read quietly for a minute. Then she lowered it, 'Hummm. No large Guilds."
     "No. There aren't."
     "They will be annoyed."
     "Then they will understand my mood. And they should be pleased that they are being granted an opportunity to join with others in seeing our gracious guests off."
     And receiving a pretty damn blatant unspoken reprimand at the same time.
     "But," he continued, "my guards will be present. As will your own. And the Guild. Attendants and their staff will be watched. The food is being considered by your own cooks. Vehicles are being moved away and the surrounding rooms cleared. If anything happens, Mikah will be moved to safety immediately."
     I looked past him, at the guards standing in the back corner. Palace guards. They wore clean and basic but functional armor, paired pistols in bandoleers across their midriffs and swords at their hips. Those looked a good deal more elaborate than their armor.
     "But you will be all right in meeting with these people?" ah Thes'ita was asking me.
     "I believe so," I said.
     "Very good," he said. "Your associates will arrive. You will have some time to prepare yourself . The ceremonies will commence and will be allowed some time to simmer before you are presented. It has been made clear that the business discussion is over. Talk will be trivial pleasantries: weather, fashion, good voyage, your impression of the food. They understand this."
     "They will do this?" Rraerch asked.
     The Rris king grinned in the manner of his people. "They'd rotted better."

Like last time, the huge room was bursting with light and heat; with noise and smells. They flooded every sense as soon as you walked through the doors.
     The ceiling arched away like a rococo aircraft hanger. Hanging from their chains below the elaborate gilt frescoes the huge chandeliers were ablaze with hundreds of candles, glowing in nimbuses of aerosolized wax and soot. On the floor below the crowd was an amorphous, multi-colored thing, continuously shifting from the tables laden with food to the milling clusters networking to the fresher air by the open balcony doors. Costumes and colors, materials and textures. Everything from gilded metal to feathers to dyed bare fur.
     There was no announcement as we approached the top of the stairs, but a sea of heads turned our way. Eyes flashing like welding sparks as they focused. Staring at me. I paused. At my sides, Chihirae and Makepeace did the same.
     Chihirae had surprised me again. Another evening dress based on something she'd seen on my laptop. A different cut from the last time: this one was white — a snow-white clean linen. A bloused top, wide open down the front to the white belt, exposing not a hint of cleavage but rather a creamy furry chest and a loop of gold necklace. The sleeves were mere suggestions, slashed down to the cuffs so they were just loose strips covering her arms. The dress was ankle-length, cut up the side, right up to her hip. It billowed when she walked, flashing a stride of tawny leg. Her eyes flashed, the jewelry gleamed.
     And on my other side, a few steps behind, a trepidatious Makepeace was in a very similar gown, this one a viridian green.
     Chihirae had told me she hadn't been sure about the color, so she'd had several made. I'd wondered at the cost, then realized it didn't matter. That one fitted Makepeace... mostly. And the cut was... it was flattering, but it wasn't like a human woman. They didn't have those curves to fill them out, but they still stalked like predators in a savannah.
     And we stood there at the top of those stairs, looking down into a predatory crowd. I think I heard Makepeace make a little 'meeep' sound. Myself, I was busy just trying to tamp down that surge of terror that clenched my guts; force it down and tell myself it didn't matter, that what was going to happen will happen. Like meeting with volatile clients, project an air of control and capability even if you didn't feel it.
     Rraerch and Chaeitch started down, stalking down the broad steps and into the throng. And I had to follow.
     The first step was always the hardest. But I took it. Then the next. And the women moved with me, down into the throng. Which felt so much more chaotic when you got down among the swirling colors and costumes, the noise and sibilant conversation, the alien smells and scents. I saw variants on Chihirae's previous evening wear: slim, tight-fitting gowns. Some keeping tight and minimal albeit with expensive materials, others decorated with intricate patterns or colors or textures. But the majority of the costumes were the elegant and expensive expressions of art and wealth so conspicuous at these functions: gold and silver and fabrics and fine leather. Not actually representational of any particular object or creature, but artistic representations of influence that just blended into a wall of colors and lights and noise. Impossible to take it all in, you just had to concentrate on what was in front of you.
     The crowd kept their distance, circulating around us as we moved. Respect for his lordship's wishes? Or respect for the armed guards and Mediators whose obvious weapons were also obviously not peace-tied.
     "You can relax a little," Rraerch muttered to me. "It's not so bad, a?"
     "Easy for you to say."
     "Come on. Just walk. Here..."
     The buffet was suddenly free, the crowd melting aside as we approached. The row of white-and-gilt covered tables were a barricade of foods and beverages: stacks of pies and finger foods and meats and delicacies, bottles and casks and bowls of drinks. Rraerch plucked a filled glass goblet from an ornate arrangement and handed it to me. "Make that last, a?" she advised and grabbed another for herself. Chaeitch already had one in one hand and a teetering pile of food in the other. He saw us looking.
     "What?" he asked through a mouthful. Then looked past us, "Sah, ah Fefthri," he said.
     Sure enough, the reed-thin Land-of-Water ambassador with the unruly head fur was hastening through the crowd. He was wearing his country's colors, blues and greens in the waistcoat over something like a cream-colored doublet and darker brown breeches. The long coat that hung to his knees was a symmetrical patchwork of greens and blues, and I'd have thought it too warm for a Rris, save that it was sleeveless, freeing the bloused and lacetrimmed sleeves of the doublet.
     "Ah," he greeted us, "fine timing — spirits are served and people were just getting talkative."
     "Not too restive?" Rraerch asked.
     "Not at all. At least, not yet. So, fine timing. I have to ask: are your current accommodations suitable? We had volunteered the embassy, but the Guild had their reservations."
     "It is quite suitable," Rraerch assured him.
     "Excellent. I was told the lodge has a long and varied history and was concerned it may have been somewhat lacking in amenities."
     "We have no complaints. Mikah?"
     "None," I said. "It's actually considerably more... personable than the palace."
     Ah Fefthri flicked an ear. "That's something I've heard before. Beds made of gold aren't so comfortable, a? Still, the Guild does believe it's safer there and we do value your safety."
     "As do I."
     He cocked his head slightly. "Quite. So I don't doubt that your associates have advised you on what will happen tonight. Affiliations are known; staff will keep their distance. There will be no trouble."
     "Thank you, sir," I said.
     The ambassador inclined his head, thistledown-wild fur bobbing. "Although, judging by the amount of paper crossing my desk I suspect half the people here tonight would be willing to make some sort of scene. His lordship's unhappy enough that they've rethought that. There won't be any unpleasantness."
     I wished I could believe that.
     "I understand business will not be discussed," he said, looking at Rraerch.
     "That was our understanding as well," she said.
     "Then you should just try and treat this as a casual affair," he said. Wander and meet, a?"
     "I think even he can do that," Chaeitch said. "And the food is good."
     "Do you know how they selected the guest list?" Rraerch asked the ambassador.
     And he looked a little uncertain. "No. That's something I would like to know. I believe it was with Guild assistance."
     "Huhn," Rraerch looked thoughtful.
     "And I should stop monopolizing our visitor here," ah Fefthri said. "I see others are waiting." With that he sketched a bow to me. "Thank you for your efforts. And the most interesting time, ah Rihey. Safe travels for your return home."
     "Thank you, sir," I said and he flicked an ear and stepped back into the crowd. Five seconds didn't pass before another voice spoke out:
     "Ah Rihey."
     We turned to face the Rris ambling toward us, right past the sentries. Calm, ears alert, a face I couldn't quite recognize, but the clothes were a clue: fine breeches and tunic and a waistcoat of finely engraved metal panels linked by silver mail. "Aesh Smither. Ah Ties. And Aesh Hiasamra'this, of course."
     "Sir," Chihirae said, bowing.
     "A dramatic look," he said to her, inclining his head in return. "Most striking." "Ah Yaershish," Rraerch said, putting name to face. The Metal Worker's Guild representative. He'd been receptive and supportive and now it wasn't surprising to see he'd drawn the king's favor. "Thank you for your gracious reception."
     "A pleasure," he said. "And a relief to be able to thank you for your efforts. I was somewhat concerned after some of the stories we've heard." And then turning to Makepeace: "And this would be aesh Tehi. Your university delegate, a?"
     Makepeace froze. Looked at the others, then carefully said, "A. yes, sir."
     "And as striking as her ladyship," he said. "That color becomes you."
     And she froze again. I think, if she'd been human, she'd have been bright red. "Thank you, sir," she squeaked.
     I think that amused him a little. And that annoyed me a little. I smiled carefully and said, "He's not wrong. It's a good look for a pretty lady."
     "I had heard you caused a bit of a stir at the University," Yaershish said to her. Now her ears flicked back. "Sir, it was a small misunderstanding. Quickly rectified. I didn't wish to turn it into an issue."
     "Something I should know about?" I asked, looking at the others.
     "Absolutely not, sir," Makepeace hastily blurted, which made me think it was.
     "A small matter," Rraerch said.
     "She was doubtless thinking you had enough to concern yourself with," Yaershish added. "And you do seem to have worked a small wonder here. I was doubtful there would be agreement between so many guilds. But, you seem to have made your message heard."
     Perhaps we had, but it hadn't been in the way we'd intended. "I regret there was so much suspicion," I said. "The entire offer was on the level. I mean: it really would benefit all parties."
     "Huhn, " he growled. "That usually never happens. Someone will always find some way to be taken advantage of."
     "But your support has been appreciated, sir," Rraerch said. "It made others at least willing to hear us out."
     "An honor," he said and took a single glass from the buffet table. Lapped genteelly. "But I'm sure the future will bring a lot more talking."
     "As long as that's as far as it goes," I said quietly.
     "A," he agreed. "Some people are too excitable. Costs everyone. But, I for one am quite willing to talk again some time. You are returning to Shattered Water, a? Perhaps I should make a journey of exploration there myself at some time. Ah Ties, aesh Smither, I'm sure Smither Works has some interesting projects under way."
     "We would be delighted to see what we could show you," Rraerch bowed smoothly.
     "Then I think I will have to make time for a journey there.
     "You would be a welcome guest," Chaeitch said in between making small hors d'oeuvres vanish.
     "Hopefully not as... ah... interesting as yours was though," ah Yaershish added. "And I think I've monopolized enough of your time. I believe there's a few who'd like to speak with you tonight, so I should give them a chance. Aesh Tehi?"
     She twitched. "Sir?"
     "Perhaps you'd do me the honor of walking with me? I would enjoy hearing about some of your exploits."
     Makepeace threw a wild-eyed look toward Rraerch, who just waved a shrug. "Go. Enjoy yourself," she said.
     "Yes, ma'am," Makepeace said.
     We watched the pair vanish into the crowd, the industrialist already asking Makepeace some question I didn't hear the tail-end of. And almost immediately there was another approaching. They must've been banked in a holding pattern around us.
     "Ah Fe'techi," Rraerch greeted the Master of the Weaver's Guild. "A pleasure to see you again."
     "Aesh Smither," the Weaver smiled pleasantly, weighing a glass of pale wine in one hand. "Likewise. And ah Ties. Aesh Hiasamra'this. Ah Rihey." He stopped there and described a polite bow. "We're grateful for your time. And your fascinating insights."
     "And thank you for the waistcoat. Although I think it's outshone by your own attire. Your own work?"
     He stood a little straighter, the finely-embroidered patterns on his waistcoat shimmering like peacock feathers. "It is, thank you. You are after another gift?"
     I smiled. Carefully. "I think I can only wear one at a time, a? But it is appreciated; I do seem to have difficulty finding clothing that fits me."
     "Ah," he looked me up and down and then waved a slow acknowledgment. "I believe I can see why that might be a problem. Perhaps our guild might be of assistance."
     "The offer is appreciated, but it may be seen as favoritism."
     "Indeed," the Guild Master smiled and then turned, gestured with his drink. "I must confess to being intrigued by her ladyship's attire. Another item of yours?"
     "Her own, in fact, sir. Something she... heard about and thought she might adapt for her own use."
     "Adapt? It has a different purpose?"
     "Difficult to explain. Similar purpose, but a different... intent?"
     "Hurhm," he rumbled thoughtfully, then cocked his head. "I'm afraid that doesn't really clarify things. But perhaps an exchange of some of those items for our services. I assure you, waistcoats are the least of what we can offer."
     'Which sounds disturbingly like a business proposition, sir," Rraerch put in.
     "Not at all. Simply an exchange of services."
     "Which sounds quite practical," I said. "But I think you might be dealing with her ladyship. I have no idea what might be considered... attractive in such an exchange."
     "Ah," he smiled. "That can change with the wind. Fashion is fickle, a? But, for a time at least, cuts like that will draw the eye. It would not displease you if I were to talk to her ladyship about it?"
     "Not at all," I said and nodded to where Chihirae was chatting with Chaeitch. "You're welcome to ask her. And her decision is her decision, a?"
     "Quite understood," he said. "Thank you. And I hope your homeward journey will be swift and smooth."
     I thanked him. He bowed politely and then I watched him stalk over to introduce himself to Chihirae. And that was all I saw because Rraerch was already greeting the next petitioner in line: "Ah Tohaski. A pleasure to see you again..."
     That was the general flow for the evening: meet and greet, some small talk and then on to the next. They were all very polite; there was none of the waspish nastiness of that last reception. I doubted many of those who'd copped an attitude that first time had been invited back for a rematch. So, all the others on their best behavior came by one after the other to offer similar spiels and I drifted through the room, wandering the length of the hall. Lost in the glittering and smoke and lights and bizarre sights and smells; inhuman proportions and movements, the glimpses of teeth, of tongues lapping drinks, the flash of eyes behind masks. It was as I'd told Rraerch: frightening. Terrifying. A spectacle that was incredible and also atavistically wrong on a level that was somewhere in my bones. And I was surrounded by it.
     And Rraerch led through it, swimming that sea like a barracuda through shoals of dinner. She knew the people, she knew the right things to say and what they'd want. Perfectly at home as she meeted and greeted. I coasted through on her tails, almost literally, as we worked our way toward the balcony doors at the far end of the ballroom.
     I caught a glimpse of Chihirae and Chaeitch through the throng. They seemed engaged enough, in animated conversation with several interested-looking individuals. Rraerch and I continued on our way toward the doors at the end of the room.
     Two more representatives came forward before we got there: A trio from the Mason's Guild, the Guild Master of the Whitesmiths Guild. There was more small talk — thanking me for the time there, the opportunity, wishing me a safe journey back. It was all a rephrasing of what all the others had said and I had to wonder what the real point of all this was. If it was making a point, it was an expensive one.
     But all the lords and ladies there that night were ones that hadn't pissed him off. What did that mean?
     Finally at the end of the room. Rraerch stopped to talk with a gentleman she seemed to know. I got a refill from the buffet and stepped over to the balcony doors. Some of those were open, gusts of air sneaking past the guards. They were cold, enough to make your skin tingle and blow away the cobwebs from the growing heat and fug inside. I looked out through the vestibule at snow sweeping in from the darkness, whirling through the pools of light around lamps, banking and dancing in miniature eddies along the parapet. The storm had eased off, the window-rattling gusts and driving ice settling in to a freezing, blustery night that could just go on till morning.
     I really hoped it'd blow itself out.
     "Some fresh air again, a?" a voice asked.
     I looked around. Blue eyes looked back. "Chieth aesh Myri," I said. "Am I right?"
     "You remember me," she said.
     "You are a difficult person to forget."
     "I believe I will take that as a compliment," she smiled serenely, those snow-white ears with their tattooed pink interiors twitching back a fraction. In the biting chill she was just wearing a jerkin and pleated kilt. The vest was chequered shades of blue and gray, the squares embroidered with broad silver thread in intricately swirling and looping patterns, matching that tattoo in her ear. Her kilt was a dark red, probably black to Rris eyes, and contrasting with her arctic fur. The pleats were weighted with little silver squares.
     "Not cold?" I asked.
     She waved that aside and wandered past me to stand in the door, gusts ruffling her fur. "We see worse back home. This will be gone by morning, I daresay."
     "I do hope so. The bay isn't the place to be with this going on."
     "Ah, you will be travelling in that new Bluebetter ship?"
     "You know about that?"
     "I attended the launch."
     "Then you know it's a good ship. Preferable to road. A lot more comfortable too."
     "But only halfway, a? Still a long journey after that."
     I sighed. "Don't remind me."
     She cocked her head, then chittered. "You like Shattered Water? I have heard you have a house there. Is it as unique as yourself?"
     "I don't think so. The doors are high enough that I don't hit my head, but not much beyond that."
     "I think I should like to see that sometime."
     "You're quite welcome to next time you're up that way," I said almost automatically.
     She gave me another self-satisfied smile. "A most generous offer," she said. "I believe I will accept."
     And I just replayed the last few lines in my head. Had she just... dammit. "I hope you will allow me some time to tidy the place up before your arrival."
     "Ah, I think you'll have time. Agreements have to be honored, but I believe my sire would be interested in my tour visiting Shattered Water."
     With an invitation to visit, I bet he would be.
     "I think he..." she was saying and then she was looking past me, her eyes widening. And the light on her was doing something strange: the shadows were shifting, swaying. And the noise in the room behind me had changed.
     I turned and looked back at the hall, at the room full of lights and people. And one of those huge chandeliers swaying back and forth in a cloud of dust.
     There was a sound in the room, like a collective gasp, and what happened then I remember like a series of snapshots as the chandelier, one of those crystal and glass monstrosities, swayed, jerked downwards. The cable supporting it ripped a gouge through the ceiling, spraying plaster and lathe and dust. The chandelier dropped. Jerked to a halt with a spangling and clashing of glass. A momentary and incandescent cloud hung suspended around it as dust and plaster and wax and paraffin from a thousand candles was liberated, then fell like a filthy cloud. The chandelier pendulumed on, swaying and twisting, crackling and shattering. Bits fell. More plaster fell. Something in the ceiling groaned.
     Cries and yells and yowls and an en mass-surge away from there.
     "Well," I think I heard aesh Myri say and then guards and Mediators were all around and I was being pushed and herded away.
     "Chihirae," I yelled, trying to push back. Claws dug in on my sore arm and I swore and a Mediator was there, snarling, "Move!"
     "Bring her," someone yelled and the Mediators were a cordon shoving through the suddenly turbulent crowd, physically shoving me off to the side, behind the buffet tables to a discrete door and a staff corridor beyond. A few meters down to another door which one dark-coated constable shoved through to look around. "It's clear," I heard that one say and I was rushed through, into dimly-lit unfamiliarity.
     "Wait," a Mediator snarled at me. "Rot you, wait here!"
     Jenes'ahn. That was Jenes'ahn I realized even as the door slammed between us. The lock rattled.
     A dark room. A dark stove. Furniture here and there: cushions over by the hearth, shelves with cubbyholes, sideboards, two desks. A lamp was guttering there, throwing more shadows than light. The desks were stacked with papers. Some sort of office? It didn't matter; what had just happened wasn't an accident.
     I stepped forward, onto a rug in the center of the room. "Should I be concerned?" I asked out loud.
     After a moment's pause there was a reply, "It can be a sensible attitude. But not at this moment."
     Over by the bookshelves there was movement. A Rris figure stepped forward from deep shadow and then stopped. I saw a movement that might have been an inclination of the head. "The lady H'risnth sends her regards."
     "I can trust that?"
     "She hopes the bite marks have healed."
     I was quiet for a bit. That was... personal information from the Queen in Open Fields. It'd incriminate her and myself. So if she'd told that to someone else, there'd had to be a reason.
     "That means something to you?"
     "Sort of," I said. "She sent you?"
     "No. We share... correspondence; similar hopes and ambitions. Similar concerns over things happening in the world today."
     She took something from the shelf. A candle. A few more steps to the desk where she lifted the shade of the lamp, used the flame to light the candle. An older woman with a dash of gray across the muzzle. Taller than many Rris. A tunic and breeches of grays and muted blues that were subdued compared with some of the surrounding finery, but it was all exquisitely tailored and embroidered. This was someone who was right at home in those surroundings, and that stance and attitude was something familiar.
     "Aesh Siathsae," she said and placed the candle on the desk, standing to look at me while the tallow sputtered and smoked before glowing steadily. Certainly no brighter than the lamp. "Chinsa Aesh Siathsae. I understand you are not good with faces, a? We have met before, albeit briefly."
     It clicked. "The decision announcement," I said.
     "You do remember."
     "I remember you looked at my hands. Now you are playing games with secret doors."
     She waved a hand. "Not secret. Just forgotten."
     "Ah. You were a candidate." I remembered Chihirae telling me.
     "A." she tipped her head slightly. "A long time ago now."
     "So you know this place. You knew they'd bring me here."
     "The Guild can be predictable at times."
     "I usually count on them to be annoying."
     "You could be more imaginative," she suggested. "Their reliability can be a strength, or a weakness, depending on how you use them. Consider which way they will jump in a situation and they can do a lot of work for you."
     "Something to bear in mind," I said. "You knew about that chandelier."
     "A," she said. "Children get into the strangest places."
     "If anyone is hurt out there..."
     "Surprised, I think. That is all. Oh, those old lights are well anchored. But I had to talk to you alone. It is important."
     I considered that: Scaring three shades of shit out of a room full of the cream of society, deceiving Mediators, property damage, sneaking in here. "It'd better be."
     She placed her hands behind her back and looked me up and down. "It is. And there's not much time before your handlers return. Now, I've been told a bit about you. And I've been told there are some things you should know."
     "By your expert, a?"
     "A."
     "And how is Mai?"
     Aesh Siathsae didn't seem the least surprised. "She's concerned. And for some of the same reasons I am."
     "Some?"
     "You are valuable. In many ways. And too many people are either blind to that or want to use you for immediate self-profit or [vainglorious] ends. Or, they're quite satisfied with things the way they are."
     "And which are you?"
     "Someone who would like to see you do some good," she said. "And, yes, I believe I can profit from what you know. But then I think we all can. There are a few of us who feel the same way. Myself, lady H'risnth, a few other acquaintances and correspondents, your... expert and her friends..."
     "I would like to know more about them," I said. "Your guards?"
     "They are reliable," she said. "And mistrustful of the Guild. As you should be."
     "I already am."
     "A. I was told some of what happened in Open Fields. Not all the details, but I know you had difficulty with them. That's not over. There's talk of taking you north, to the Guild Hall in Stone Circles. I would strongly advise you not to go — you most likely wouldn't come out alive."
     "I would think that if the Guild wants me dead then I wouldn't have much say in the matter."
     "Not all. A few."
     I sighed. "Is that still going on?"
     She cocked her head. "I'm not sure what you're referring to, but the Guild has people who are very determined in their duties and have different ways of interpreting them. If you went to Stone Circles you would be too accessible to them."
     "I doubt I would have much choice, but I will bear that in mind."
     A flick of her ears. "Another thing: this plan of Land of Water's — sending you to countries to provide your services. It's foolish nonsense. You'll get yourself killed. Or worse. All the time you're wasting on the road other lands will be wondering what they're missing out on. Suspicion and accusation will lead to worse. It won't work."
     "You have a better solution?"
     "Not at all. All I can suggest is that you try to ensure that what one country is told, all are told. No one relegated to scraps and bitterness, a?"
     "You should be telling this to the governments."
     "They have been made aware, but I think you should know also. And there is one last thing you should know: they have been lying to you. Land-of-Water, the Guild..."
     "That's not a surprise."
     "And your teacher."
     That hit. I stood for a few seconds. Swallowed. "What do you mean?"
     "She's been ordered to stay with you."
     "How can you know that?"
     "Our... expert again. She says you... your kind are social. More than we are. You try to fit in; you try to adopt peoples' behavior and mannerisms; you try to be close to people; you... need. You need someone close. Obsession is normal for you. Not for normal people. And the Guild know this, so your teacher has to accept the insanity. And we know the Mediator Guild has ordered her to stay with you; to act normally with you; to keep you happy. Why do you think she's still around after... after all this?"
     I felt that plummeting feeling, the sudden solitude of a dark room with an alien telling me that I was... confirming what a seditious voice in the back of my brain had known. I shuddered.
     "Ah Rihey?" she ventured. I suppose to much time had passed with me standing there trying to find a way to deny what was too obvious. "Do you understand that?"
     "A," I said flatly. "It's not... like that."
     Now she was quiet, motionless. Staring at me. Then she sighed, just the faintest hiss and tip of her head that turned her eyes to a pair of molten pennies. "No. Of course not. Just as she said you would say, a?"
     I couldn't reply to that. "Why're you telling me this?!"
     "Because we want you to consider your position and what those of the people around you are. How far can you trust them?" Her ears twitched and she glanced past me. "And we're out of time." She straightened and ghosted backwards, to the deeper gloom. "Good trails and warm winds to you, Mikah ah Rihey."
     Perhaps the drapes stirred a little, but she was gone. When the key rattled in the lock and light spilled across the floor and the Mediators strode in, I was perusing a bookshelf by the light of a candle.
     "Still here," Jenes'ahn noted.
     "What happened?" I asked.
     She stopped on the rug, looked around. Her tail lashed. "Should I ask you that?"
     "What? What happened out there? Was anyone hurt? Chihirae..."
     "Is fine," she growled. A pause, then she said. "Old rope and rats."
     "What? At that time? That doesn't seem suspicious?"
     "Quite," she said and I saw she was looking around, sniffing. I blew out the candle, sending smoke swirling. Jenes'ahn stiffened, twitched to stare at me. Huh, that was why she'd lit the candle. That was a trick I'd have to remember.
     "No-one was hurt?" I asked.
     "No," she growled and seemed to settle slightly, although her tail was still lashing. "Noone hurt. Just startled and worried. And covered in dust and wax. And some as furious as his lordship."
     "I can imagine."
     "I don't think you can," she rumbled again. "Now, come along. We're getting you out of here."
     The ballroom was still crowded. Hot and anxious. Conversation hissing louder and noticeably more animated. Rris nobility milled about, talking and gesturing while casting dark looks and avoiding the area directly under the closest chandelier. In that space harried servants bustled about with brooms and dustpans, clearing away the debris and mess of lathe and plaster and crystals and candles that littered the floor. Above them the stricken chandelier hung drunkenly askew at the end of its anchor, a few candles still flickering.
     If that had gone wrong...
     Heads turned and the crowd watched as the Guild and flanking guards hurried me through there. Someone, Hedia, hurried over and was headed off by a Mediator. Their conversation was left behind as we headed back to the stairs, away into the Palace.
     The others were waiting out in that courtyard by the carriages, standing out in the freezing night. The wind had died, the snow subsided to drifting ice in the air, frosting on fur. Moonlight was breaking through thinning cloud, almost as bright as the few torches flickering around the yard. Just enough light that I could see they all looked okay. Shaken, but okay. Except for Makepeace, who was wide-eyed and wearing a mantle of plaster dust and wax.
     "Mikah..." Rraerch saw me.
     "I'm fine," I held up a hand, forestalling the usual questions. "The Guild just wanted to see what was happening. You are all okay? Chihirae?"
     Like Makepeace she was still wearing her evening dress. Temperature around zero and she was standing out there in the freezing mist. I touched her arm where her fur was bottled up against the cold. I brushed at some snow and found it was plaster. "Chihirae?"
     "I'm fine," she said and when she looked at me her face was unreadable.
     "I'm... " I started to say, then caught myself. "I'm relieved," I said. "I'm glad. That was... that was not supposed to happen, I think."
     "It never is, is it," she sighed, a pale gust of breath. Ears flattened and she looked back at her shaggy feet. "Always seems to happen around you, a? Almost happened to Makepeace."
     "She was standing right under it," Chaeitch said and grimaced. "That's going to be hard to get out."
     I shook my head and remembered that mass of metal and glass. "Could have been worse."
     "It's all right, sir," Makepeace spoke up, worrying at a tuft of wax and fur. "It will clean out. Eventually."
     "Rot it!" Rraerch abruptly snarled, the outburst making me flinch. "This is beyond... this is absurd. Someone is going to have to be held accountable for this! The Guild gave us assurances!"
     It was difficult to see in the dark, but she was bristling.
     "We did," Jenes'ahn said. "And they were kept. Everything went acceptably. This was... something else."
     "In what way was this 'acceptable', constable? We follow your advice: to come here tonight, business as usual, nothing out of the ordinary. And where does it get us?!"
     Jenes'ahn returned a stare that was as impassive as a cannon barrel. It was Rohinia who spoke up: "Aesh Smither, we have reason and this. But... not here. Not now. A?"
     Rraerch was silent. Bristling. Breath steaming from her nostrils. Then she snapped her jaws shut, biting at air with a clack of teeth. "Right. Very good. In that case, Constable, we should get Mikah out of this chill. Back to some warmth, a?"
     "An excellent notion," Rohinia said.
     So, I reflected as we headed for the carriages, there were limits. And Rraerch was right up against them.
     I held the door open for Chihirae. She scrambled in and I followed her twitching tail, sitting on the forward-facing bench in the back. Rohinia and Rraerch followed. The cabs were fine for four Rris, not so fine when you put someone my size in there. I shifted sideways a bit to let them past and my arm pressed against Chihirae's. She flinched. She was trembling.
     Limits. She was at hers as well.
     Rohinia was watching, expressionless and I met his eyes for a second, saw them flare in the light of the lamps through the window as the carriage swung away.
     "So, an accident," Rraerch growled after a while.
     "So it would appear," Rohinia said mildly. "Rats got at the ropes in the ceiling. The staff didn't notice the damage."
     "And it falls at precisely that time?"
     "As a method of assassination it is quite ridiculous. Also, an assassin would have disconnected that chain. The mechanism had been used more often than usual in the past few months, so that would put more stress on the thing."
     "And you say it went 'acceptably'."
     "Aesh Smither," Rohinia said, "what the Guild did tonight had very little to do with this gathering."
     "But this was where the trouble was! And the Guild wasn't."
     I held up a finger. "Ah, no." I addressed Rohinia. "You let the troublemakers out to play, didn't you."
     I think Rohinia tipped his head a fraction. "In a way, a. We were interested in a few parties who were not invited and what they would do while this was going on. It turns out they were... quite busy."
     "The ones behind the attacks, you mean?" Rraerch breathed.
     "Details are still being examined, but it would seem there is a network." Perhaps there was a frown there. "Or more precisely, networks. And some operating inside others. They seem quite active at times like this."
     "So you know who they are?"
     "All I have are preliminary reports. I can't tell you more: I simply don't have the information, and this is still Guild business. But you should know that the Guild is busy."
     "Thank you, Constable," Rraerch said.
     "How long until you do know more?" I asked.
     "When the reports come in," the Mediator said. "And that will happen as information becomes available. However, these exercises are taking place at all hours, all over the city and beyond. And unfortunately we don't have remote talking machines like yours."
     No. They'd be running messengers, collating everything manually with paper and written notes. I wondered how they'd do that and remembered glimpses of rooms full of filing cabinets in a Guild Hall. Was it all manual? How did they access stuff like that? And Rohinia's comment made me realized they might not have even noticed that he was dead wrong.

The ride was dark and cold. Rraerch and Rohinia talked, about plans and options for the near future and I only listened with half an ear. Moonlight came and went as clouds rearranged themselves across the night sky. Trees were an impenetrable dark wall outside, but every so often we passed by one of those little marker cairns with its little lamp burning in the black. For me it was just a faint glimmer in the blackness, and the occasional eyeshine when a Rris looked my way.
     Lights were burning at the lodge. Just enough to rouse a glow in the windows — an incredibly inviting sight against the winter starkness. The three carriages drew up and we climbed out, into the chill night breeze that whipped sparks from braziers set before the front doors. I stretched, looked around. At the peripheries of the light, right out on the edge of what I could see, the surreal shapes of Rris cavalry were stalking through the snow — elk-mounted, armed and armored Rris, their eyes glinting as they looked our way, their beasts also armored and with brass-capped horns and breath steaming in the moonlight. The troop must've joined us as a screen at some point, just for that short trip. Now they patrolled the grounds, watching for trouble. I didn't think they'd find any.
     More lamps were burning inside, but the air wasn't much warmer. And there was a spattering of claws on hard flooring as a Rris hurried across the way to head us off. Hedia drew up, adjusting her waistcoat and breathing heavily. She'd made good time. "Sir," she panted. "Oh, sir. Apologies and most sincere regrets at this... this disaster! His lordship is most appalled. Aesh Smither! This is not something Bluebetter can let stand unanswered."
     "You'll charge the rats?" Rraerch sighed.
     "We protest that most vehemently!" Hedia almost yowled, her ears flat. "Those mechanisms are maintained meticulously! Vermin would have no presence there! We cry foul deeds and subversion! Detractors and subversives are attempting to undermine the understanding between our lands. You mustn't let them succeed!"
     "The Guild deems that unlikely," Rohinia said, coming up behind us with an ear cocked. "Only property damage was accomplished. However, another result is likely damage to the relationship between Bluebetter and Land-of-Water. That may have been an objective. We would suggest your nations carry on with the agreed contracts."
     Hedia froze, visibly trembling and eyes gone jet black. "What happened... that cannot have been an accident."
     "We are still investigating," Rohinia said. "But if it was intentional and the goal was disruption, then the best thing to do is to go about business as usual. If there is a cause, the Guild will find it."
     A pause in which Hedia's jaw twitched as if she were about to say something, then she exhaled. "A, Constable. If our honored guests are amenable to this?"
     Rraerch looked at me. "You were the one dragged away. Do you wish to register a complaint?"
     "I'm fine," I said. "Makepeace got the worst of it. Perhaps you could arrange a groom for her tonight? Something to help with that plaster in her fur?"
     "That's all?" Hedia looked from one of us to another.
     "I believe so," Rraerch said. "There was no injury, just some discomfort for us. I imagine the cost for your repairs will be considerably greater."
     "A. Quite. Very well, ma'am, it will be done. The best grooms. Tonight."
     She sketched a bow, once. Then a deeper one before hurrying off to make things as right as she could. I sighed and went to make my own way upstairs. If they thought that the whole thing was an accident, then they might not start looking further into the why of it all. Then they might find some trace or evidence or someone might remember there was another way into that room and then they'd be asking me more questions.
     But, dammit, those idiots had endangered a room full of people, some of whom were friends of mine, just so they could talk with me. And tell me things that I didn't really want to hear.
     What sort of people would do that? Whose side were they on?
     Their own. Quite possibly not friends then. It was never that simple.
     At the top of the stairs I looked up at the hides pinned to the wall and shuddered. Just because they weren't hostile didn't mean they were friendly — just on yet another side. And with motives that might be as alien to me as the thinking behind those trophies or decorations or warnings.
     "You'll get some rest?"
     I flinched at the voice behind me. Rraerch. Silent as a cobweb. "Yeah," I nodded absently. "Last time in a real bed for a while, a?"
     "Make the most of it," she grinned at me, imitating a smile. "You'll be woken tomorrow. The tide's early, remember."
     She headed away to her own quarters. I hesitated, then continued down the hall to another door. The guards there ducked their heads, but a tail tip was twitching. "She is in?" I asked.
     "Yes, sir," one of them replied.
     I reached up to knock and as I did so the door abruptly swung open, leaving me standing there with my knuckles about to rap on Jenes'ahn's nose. She looked up, focused on my hand, then my face. Her own pupils flexed wide.
     "Mikah," she said.
     I lowered my arm. "Right first time. Chihirae is here?"
     "She is."
     "And what are you doing here?"
     "Asking questions," she said. "I'll have some for you later."
     "Always something to look forward to, isn't there."
     "Hnnn," she almost-growled and pushed past me, stalked away into the twilight. I watched her leave. Grimaced. Then turned to the apartment. Chihirae was standing there, watching me. The dress was gone, so was the jewelry. Firelight backlit her in a chiaroscuro — a dark figure limed in a halo of glowing fur, eyes gleaming holes in the shadow.
     "May I enter?" I asked, speaking as carefully as I could.
     A pause of several heartbeats before she waved an affirmative and turned away.
     I closed the door. Followed. The lively red-themed living area in her apartments was, dim and chilly. A window was open somewhere and the fresh air couldn't get much fresher. Over by the door stood travelling chests packed for the morning. Her dress was folded on one, waiting to be packed. Chihirae was standing with her back to the open stove. She was lifting her shaggy feet one at a time and holding them back to the warmth, melting ice dripping from wet fur. I saw her inhale, then prick her ears up, features purse in pleasantness. "Mikah. They said you're unhurt."
     "I'm fine," I said, again. "I wanted to check on you. I wanted to say... I'm sorry."
     A hissing sigh as she raised the other foot. "I know you are," she said and her ears wilted. "Every time, a?"
     "Because it's true. I don't want..." I stepped closer. Stopped. Not sure what was a politic distance. I gestured vaguely, trying to futilely indicate everything. "Any of this. And I don't know how to make them stop."
     "Rot it all," she hissed softly at the stove. Put her feet down. Stalked over to peer up at me. Wearing only her fur and utterly unselfconscious. She reached up, batting gently at the side of my face. "I know. And why should you be apologizing for this? It was an accident, a?" Then she hesitated and I saw things happening behind her eyes. "Wasn't it?"
     I started to lie. Hesitated. And she saw.
     "Mikah?" Now there was some urgency in her tone. "Mikah, what happened?"
     "I... don't know," I said. "Things."
     "It wasn't an accident?"
     "It wasn't an attack. You were never in danger," I said. "It was... something else. I can't explain because... because of her. The Guild. What they'd do."
     "Oh, plague and rot. Mikah," her ears wilted and she just stared at me.
     "Why was she here?" I asked.
     "She was asking me about what happened tonight. What I saw. You have to..."
     "Asking? Or telling?"
     That hit. I saw the flinch: the twitch of the head, the recoil.
     "Is she telling you what to do? Making you stay?"
     The amber eyes went black, bordered with a thread of white.
     "Chi," I ventured, "are you afraid of me?"
     A blink.
     "It's not like that," she said in a small voice and took a single step forward. Up against me, leaning head down and pressing against my chest. I bowed over her, embraced her, tufted ears tickling my cheek, inhaled that dusty scent of sun and dust and grassy fields. When I hugged her she shivered violently. "It's not like that. It's not you. Mikah, I couldn't be afraid of you."
     "It's everything else then, a?" I murmured.
     She didn't reply.
     I sighed into her fur. Held her. Didn't want to let go. "It's the Guild, a?" I murmured. I didn't know if the walls had ears, but it wouldn't have surprised me. "They tell you to stay. To be with me. They've threatened you."
     "They don't have to," she said in a voice so low it was almost a growl. "If I try and go anywhere... I'm a target, Mikah. I don't know why and I never wanted this and I can't stand being this afraid all the time."
     That came out in a rush, a desperate confession. And I understood. I thought I understood. And I hated the whole damn mess. "I... Chihirae, I have to make this right." "You can't go against the Guild!"
     "I won't. I know that's... I swear to you, I won't."
     "Then what can you do?!" she growled against me and I wasn't sure if it was anger or frustration. "Rot, you can't make these promises of protection! You know that!" Her hands clenched and claws popped through fabric, into my skin. I flinched and don't know if she even noticed.
     "I know. I know I've done that. I failed at that. But I think there is something I can do... Can you trust me?"
     A silence.
     "Chi?"
     "What... are you going to do?" I could barely hear that question.
     "I..." I swallowed. "I'm not sure yet."
     "You don't know?"
     "I know. I think I know. I just need... I need to find out if it will work."
     "But you can't tell me."
     "No. Not yet. I will find out and... you will know."
     Another pause. Then her hand tightened a little, loosened, "And you should know by now that's why I can't be afraid of you: I trust you."
     I just held her for a while. Hating the plan I was hatching.

Staff were there in the antechamber of my quarters, greeting me, bustling to take my coat and dripping shoes. I surrendered the coat and traded shoes for warm moccasins and trudged on through to the living area.
     Lamps were lit, setting soft light and shadow playing around the carved embellishments on the ceiling. The stove crackled and roared gently, spitting out heat — actual warmth after a frigid day. Dented and battered steamer trunks were packed and stacked, waiting for morning. I dropped down onto a cushion in front of the stove, stretched my feet out towards it and just closed my eyes, debating whether or not to go down for a bath.
     "Sir?" a voice from the door. A member of the staff waiting there. "Food has been prepared if you would like to eat."
     And food sounded good. "Thank you."
     There was an ornate little wrought-iron cart and covered dishes on warming trays. Under those covers: breads and pastries and strips of llama and bison steaks, peeled fruits and bowls of nuts and berries. A bottle of wine, a silver carafe of water. While the Rris laid out cutlery and plates I took a glass of water and stood at the door to the sleeping area, looking out the windows. Sipped. Almost dropped the glass when the front door slammed open.
     Jenes'ahn ripped down the hall at full gallop, toe claws catching in the rugs as she pelted in. "Don't drink anything!" she yowled. "You," she snarled, levelling a pistol at the startled servant, "Don't move. And Mi... don't drink that!"
     I froze, looked down at the half-empty glass in my hand. She also stared at it, then lifted her stony stare. "You drank it," she hissed.
     "Yes?" I almost stopped breathing.
     The servant bolted, tail bottled and claws digging into the floor. Jenes'ahn didn't even look around. She came toward me, jammed her pistol into its bandolier and dug for something in a pocket while snarling, "Rot you, you can't even smell it? How are you feeling. Do you have dizziness, nausea, blood in your stool, vomiting... swallow this."
     "What?" I struggled to process that and she shoved something into my hand: a twisted paper packet with some kind of grey granular stuff in it. I eyed it dubiously. "What is this? What's it made from?"
     There was commotion outside — shouts, snarling and yowls. Something smashed. Jenes'ahn ignored it. "You... it's a mix of poppy extract. To make you vomit. Try and get it out of your system."
     That wasn't encouraging. "Get what out?" I asked with a sinking feeling.
     Her tail lashed. "It's a slow poison. Builds up. They've been dosing your water for long enough it should have hit you by now. Plague and mange, eat it! It might save your life."
     "You know what your medicines can do to me..."
     "Compared to what that stuff will do it's a safe risk."
     There was a nagging doubt. "You're sure of that? They've been doing it for a while? I feel... fine. What did I drink?"
     "Rot you," she glared, wild eyed, then took a deep breath. "A slow poison. A extract of willow bark. It causes nausea, internal bleeding and spasms and...
     "Hold on," I said. "Hold on. Willow bark? From a willow tree?"
     She blinked. "That is usually where an extract comes from."
     I lifted the glass. Sniffed it. That hadn't been grit I'd seen in the water. But willow bark... back home that'd been used as medicine for hundreds of years. Same sort of painkiller as aspirin apparently. Which was about as innocuous as you could get.
     For humans. And assuming it was the same here.
     "It's harmless," I said. "I think."
     "It's a slow poison!"
     "For you." I held the glass up to a lamp, turning it back and forth. There was some cloudiness, some particulate matter, but considering some of the stuff I'd drunk since coming here, that was nothing. And it was the reason I wanted it boiled.. "If it's what I think it is, it's harmless in these amounts."
     She gaped. Then looked suspicious.
     "I told you your medicines affect me differently. At least for once it's in m my favor. For me it's a medicine. In fact, I wouldn't mind getting some more."
     "Are you serious?"
     "A. And is this the only thing they're poisoning? How did you find out about it?"
     "You..." She shook her head quickly, like a fly had buzzed into her ear. "I told you we used tonight to light fires. There were a few who used the opportunity for meetings or messages. These closed paths for us. Questions were answered. This was one of the reports that came in."
     "So you know who's responsible."
     "I said it was one of the first reports. It was an intercepted message. It seemed quite important at the time, so we didn't wait for further information," she said and there was an accusation behind that.
     "Sorry. You're right. I appreciate the thought. I do. If it'd been something serious..."
     "It was something serious," she hissed. "It was poison. It was supposed to be poison. If it'd been something else, then you might not be taking this so calmly."
     I set the glass down with the food. "Just the water?"
     "As far as we know what are you doing?!"
     I sniffed the pastry I'd picked up, for all the good that would do. Popped it in my mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. It was hot. "I'm hungry. It's been an interesting day. Someone has tried to drop a lamp on me and now it turns out they've also been trying to poison me. A little... ah... what's the word? Unnecessary? Unneeded?"
     "," she offhandedly corrected me. "And if they poisoned that too?"
     I shrugged. "Did your reports mention that?"
     A hiss through bared teeth. "They did not. But nor did they mention that incident at the palace. We don't know what we've missed."
     "You're listening to conversations, a? Seeing who talks to whom. Who has agreements, plans."
     "Amongst other things, yes."
     "You must've some more information. There are Guilds behind this. They've left tracks."
     "You are thinking of the clockmakers, aren't you. The bombs. Their mechanisms."
     "I was thinking they weren't that foolish. I was thinking of the ones behind the clockmakers."
     She stopped. Eyes narrowed. "What do you know about that?"
     "That the clockmakers have been in... there is money trouble, isn't there. They are concerned. They are selling property and things of value. Perhaps someone offered a very good deal on some of their products and they couldn't refuse."
     A hesitation. "The Bluebetter military ordered an even dozen of those devices over a year ago."
     "Ah. Did the delivery match the order?"
     "It would seem that the Guild received an order for fifteen. You wouldn't know where the remainder went, a?"
     "I think I know where two of them ended up," I said. "But you could look for who is talking after we leave."
     Her ears went back. "What do you mean?"
     I sighed. "I have told you: follow the money. It's always about that. And money knows what makes money, even if you don't."
     "What are you talking about."
     "Goddammit! Didn't it ever strike your people as odd that the Banker's Guild would have a signal tower for that Hilltop Folly? They are bankers — why would they have that if it was such a waste of time?"
     "Unreliable and too expensive," she sniffed with that attitude of sheer confidence. "A fortune for a note that might or might not get there."
     "That's what the Guild believes, is it?"
     "Of course." "Oh, fucking...Someone was using it to track us. How do you think they knew where we were? How do you think they got that welcoming party waiting for us when we arrived? I'm not sure you understand how valuable communications are."
     "And you do?" The skepticism was palpable.
     "You've seen my machines. My phone. That's what they're for. We take it seriously." And empires — geopolitical and financial — have risen and fallen depending on whom could get information fastest. "If you can get a message across a country faster than your competition? Information on goods or prices or movements of troops?"
     She was silent, glowering. The stove crackled. In the lamplight her eyes flared.
     I waved a half-pastry toward the window and the world beyond. "You think that if someone in a certain business in a certain city knew before their competitors what goods were coming in, and how much, they might be able to anticipate supply? demand? Stock prices? If they did, would they want others to know about that fact?"
     She was motionless, eyes locked on me. Then she growled: "Rot. You think the Bankers Guild is involved?"
     "I don't know," I said. "People who owe them money seem to have been doing them favors. Are debts being paid off like that? And someone is using this system they have access to. It might be interesting to see if any messages are sent after we leave. And who sends them."
     Another moment where she was quiet. I couldn't read anything behind that mask. "Rot," she said again and then just turned in a whirl of coat tails and real tail and stalked out. "Stay here," she snarled over her shoulder and the door slammed behind her.
     I looked at the trolley, the food on it. "Whelp, there goes that night on the town."

She came to me later that night.
     A ghost slipped down the hall. A presence crossed the living room — a moving shadow cast in the glow from the stove. It stopped at the door to the bedroom, just out of the moonglow from the windows. Hesitated.
     "It's okay," I said quietly. I knew that form, that figure. "I thought you might... she sent you?"
     A single little affirmative wave of the hand in the twilight.
     "You don't have to," I said.
     A slight tip of the head, and then she moved closer. The bed shifted, creaked as she knelt, crawled over to where I was sitting by the windows. I could see her a bit better there, whenever the scudding clouds unveiled the moon. I opened the eiderdown wrapped around my shoulders and she insinuated herself, up against my side under the blankets. A hairy little furnace leaning against me. I could feel a heartbeat drubbing away.
     "Hi," I whispered.
     "Hi," she returned, all sibilants and growl. I could feel it through her bones. "Why're you still awake?" she asked quietly
     "I wondered if you would come. If she'd send you."
     "She was concerned. And angry. Mostly angry. What did you do?"
     "It wasn't me this time," I finally said. "Something else happened. And I think I told her how to do her job."
     "Oh," she said. I wasn't about to mention the attempted poisoning. That was just... stupid luck. I guess the cosmic dice-roll had to my way once in a while. "Was that wise?"
     "Probably not."
     We sat quietly for a while, wrapped in a bit of warmth and silence. Outside was still and cold. Frost crawled across the glass. An icy halo ringed the moon.
     "I was concerned," she said after what seemed the longest time. "About... what happened earlier. I was worried you might misunderstand. It's not you, you know. Not you. It's just..."
     She trailed off with a frustrated noise. "I understand," I said.
     "It's all this that goes on around you. Drawn to you... It's that that's terrifying. Not you."
     "Hey, I understand."
     Another pause. "I hate it."
     "So do I."
     A sigh. "Why couldn't you have just been a normal man?"
     "I used to think I was."
     A small chitter and she bumped her head against me. A hand stroked my leg hesitantly. "What you said earlier... getting away from the Guild. Do you really think you can do that?"
     "I'm not sure. I think there might be something I can do. I have to see if some things can be arranged."
     "Can you tell me?"
     "I don't think that would be wise. If I tell you then it might not happen."
     "Oh."
     I reached to scratch her back, raking through the fur. "I will try though. Can you trust me? A bit longer?"
     This time the pause was longer. "I can," she said, eventually. "Not much choice, a?"
     "They're not that bad?"
     Another little noise, a chitter or a growl. "They took me once, Mikah. That was... I never thought of something like that. Now they try again. If I'm not with you the Guild will withdraw protection. They will try again. The Guild lets me know that. They say if I don't cooperate and do as they say — go to you when they say — they will leave me to fend for myself."
     "But if you're not with me you would be safe?"
     A sigh. "They know what you're like. Everyone does, now. If I go they will think you still value me. They would want me as a token to control you. They know your need. Your obsession."
     "My... obsession," I echoed. "That's how you see it?"
     "A. You know it's true."
     That struck like a dagger into emotions she didn't have. "It's not about wanting," I said quietly, then frowned. "Well, it is. It's about both people wanting; about both feeling the same and wanting the same from each other. Sharing the feelings. Does that make sense?"
     "That almost sounds normal," she said. "But what I feel from you isn't normal, a? You give me so much, but I can't return that, yet you want to have me here. Like right now. I want to be here. I want to [fulfill] what I have to, but you have no obligation to me."
     That fucking word again. I stared out the window and tried to make some sort of sense out of that. There was... something there. But, it wasn't something I could fit into that place in my soul.
     "Sometimes," she said into the uncertain silence, "sometimes, no words is easier, a?"
     "A. Sometimes," I agreed. "But it's like taking the easy road: you might wonder what you missed."
     "I think I know what I missed," she stroked my leg again. "And regretfully, I doubt it's something I can ever truly understand." She bumped her head against my shoulder.
     I started to ask a question, that question that the Guild had tortured me with. Faltered. Then finally managed: "Chi, do you think I'm insane?"
     "What?" She seemed taken aback by that question. "Why would you ask that?"
     "I've heard stories. About Rris pairs. Men and women. They stay together for a long time. That seems normal to me. But I'm told that's considered... not normal. As you say, obsessive. Now the Guild presses you into a relationship like that. With me. And for me it's normal. Is that insanity?"
     A pause. "If you were Rris... it would be too much like that. You aren't. You are trying to... fit. You are trying to be something you aren't. The doctor understood that, didn't she. That was why she brought me to Shattered Water: so I could be something you needed. So you don't try to do what you tried in Westwater again. That was purest insanity."
     She was quiet for a moment. Thoughtful. I didn't say anything, just stroked her back.
     "You need something," she eventually said, "and we just can't provide it.
     "So, no. Not insane. You are right and proper, just in the wrong place."
     "That," I said, "does seem a good description of my life at the moment."
     A soft laugh. "All those stories that people hear and believe, and they miss the simplest facts."
     "Like the Mediators?"
     "A. They listened to what that doctor said. She was right in a lot of things."
     "I don't know. They still have some strange ideas."
     "Like what?"
     I told her.
     She laughed. "Oh, that."
     "You know?"
     "Of course. They asked me. I told them it was ridiculous. It was a nice surprise, but not that nice. Rot," she snorted, "I did try to point out the obvious."
     "Which was?"
     "You are like all men are in the springtime, but with you it's all the time."
     "What does that mean?"
     "It means they all want one thing. They become quite easy to manipulate."
     "What?"
     Her hand drifted across my leg. My thigh. Gently fondled, explored, then caught a part of me that was very exposed compared to their males. Squeezed. Tugged. "You know, when the time is right men do get interested in sex. Very interested. They will do silly and thoughtless things for the moment. Reminds me of someone."
     "I... don't?"
     She continued her casual manual attentions, head leaning against me as she lightly said, "A? And when your scent changes like that? When your body responds? When your heartbeat changes. When your blood brightens? You once followed someone who offered you that, didn't you."
     "That wasn't the same." It wasn't easy following a train of thought on that track while she was actively trying to derail it.
     "No?" She stroked a fingertip, a clawtip, very slowly, very precisely. My breath caught in my throat just before she moved and shoved and I was on my back on the bed and she was leaning on my chest and grinning down on me. "She offered. You followed. Mikah, a man, a Rris man, wouldn't normally think like that. I tried to tell this to the Guild, but I'm not sure they really understood. So, I fear others are more likely to use this to manipulate you than the other way around."
     "You make a good point," I managed to say.
     "I am so pleased you think so," she said and the false grin gaped a bit wider. And then she looked down at her handiwork and chittered. "Yours can be quite impressive too."
     "Have you been drinking again?"
     "I started. I was interrupted."
     "So... is this going somewhere? Or is this part of your demonstration?"
     "You did understand what I was saying?"
     "Um, something, something, something fun-time?"
     "Are you thinking with this end?" a quick squeeze. "Or this end?" she leaned closer to my face.
     "I understand!" I protested. "It's nothing new to me. As you say, my kind plays those games all the time. I know what to look for."
     "Like me?" she placed hands to my chest, rested her chin to them. Her eyes glowed. "You know everything about me? Everything the Guild wants me to do?"
     "I know you deserve better than me."
     Chihirae was silent. Silent as she stared at me, studied me, and her hand wandered to my shoulder. Fingers stroked over an old knot of scar tissue. She gave a sigh I felt through her body. "Again, you... rot you. Well, I suppose we have a last night to ourselves here."
     "That's a yes?"
     "It's a sight more comfortable than that strange boat and carriages and flea-ridden inns," she growled again, then smiled down. "This will be worth my time, a?"
     I reached up, to scratch her chin, up behind her ears. She rumbled, deep in her chest as I raked fingers down her neck, through her winter coat as she moved over me, as I drew her close, a heavy heat in the winter air.
     "My claws," she murmured. "I haven't got covers."
     "I'll risk it," I replied. "I trust you."
     "Fool," she chittered and nuzzled me as we shifted about and tried to get closer. Two beings, two mismatched pieces of soul and body trying to do what neither was precisely made for. Parts aligning and slipping and trying to mesh. Sometimes it didn't work, sometimes it did. Claws nicked me and she gasped apology, then she made a strained noise as I moved a little too enthusiastically. But neither of us were neophytes; we'd been there, done that, and each other. We persevered and got sweaty and shed fur and laughed at the differences and the choreography to sidestep our bodies' assumptions and somewhere in the small hours we met halfway, finding her spooned in my arms, spine pressing against me and heart drubbing against that. Warm against the winter.
     "Got you," I whispered.
     She squirmed, reached down. "Got you," she laughed and played for a bit, then adjusted things. A hitch of breath from both of us, then a sigh. "Now," she rumbled, "make yourself useful."
     I did my best. Moving as she wanted, scratching at her fur of her chest. And she joined, moving, craning back to nip at me and make monosyllabic urgings. Both working toward that moment when she went hawser-taut in my arms, every muscle jerking as she choked out a strangled yowl, her furry back arching against me as I clutched her tight and buried my face in her fur and her scent and kept moving. And. Hugged. Her close. As close as I could as everything else went away for a few seconds.
     And exhaled. Realized I'd been holding her maybe too tight. Felt her sigh and relax in my arms as we slowly descended from that moment.
     And a while later, while we were laying as hearts slowed and breathing eased, she laid a hand on my chest, ruffled the hairs there. "Better?" she asked.
     "A," I almost laughed. "Better. And you?"
     "Thank you," she said. "That was pleasant."
     "Pleasant?" I laced fingers behind my head. "Calm down there. Don't get too excited."
     "Don't you scream your victory too much," she chittered and jabbed me. "Pleasant. A. And that should keep the Guild happy."
     "And did it do anything for you?" I asked.
     "I've had better."
     "Oh? Should I be asking someone for pointers?"
     "Huhn, there are some things you do very well, but one can't survive on drinking wine all the time."
     "A glass of water is welcome sometimes?"
     "Indeed."
     "Well, I hope I'm at least an acceptable vintage," I smiled and reached down to her and carefully plucked a chunk of white gypsum from the fur on her head. "Even if you do get plastered."
     "Rot," she growled and raked a hand over her head. A little white cloud puffed up. "Is there a lot?"
     "It's winter. If it's snowing no-one will... ow!"
     "Rumors of your amusingness are exaggerated. Do you think the bath is still running?"
     "Shall we go see?"
     "Will they let you?"
     "I don't think I'll be asking."

We left before dawn. Before dawn was even a suggestion in the sky.
     Our luggage departed before us in a heavily loaded and guarded wagon train. The rest of us had some time for a wash and a half-way civilized breakfast by candlelight. Chaeitch worked his way through strips of smoked llama steaks, and Makepeace demolished a pile of small mince and blueberry pies. She also, I suspected, managed to tuck some away for later.
     Then it was time. A final check in my rooms to make sure nothing was left behind. Then I pulled my heavy coat on and made sure the pistols were where they should be, slung the laptop over my shoulder, and headed for the foyer.
     Hedia was waiting for us there, in her crisp and elegant cloak and tunic in Bluebetter colors. Lodge staff lined up behind her to bow farewell as we headed out into the freezing pre-dawn darkness where a row of carriages were waiting. Gilt on the cabs, on the elks' tack and harness, on the polished armor of the mounted escorts, all gleamed in flickering lamplight. Chihirae, Chaeitch and I were ushered into one cab, joined by Rohinia. The others got to ride with Jenes'ahn. Chihirae sat beside me, and then — without a word — dropped her head against my shoulder, closed her eyes, started snoring.
     Chaeitch gave me a slitted-eyes, whiskers-forward, tongue-lolling smirk, but didn't say anything.
     The ride to the docks was uneventful. Nothing exploded; there was no gunfire or knifeplay or clambering around on carriages careening through the dark streets. Bit of a letdown, really. So we rattled our way through the predawn, through dark streets where occasional lights were burning in bakeries and foundries and inns and other places that worked through the dark hours. Not much else to see.
     The docks were a different story.
     We rumbled through a gatehouse and suddenly there was light outside. Lamps were burning everywhere. Not electric, not as bright as that, but there were enough of them to light the waterside up like a festival. Hanging from posts, stanchions, walls, strung over the roads and docksides, lighting a path through ranks of soldiers and guards. Rris didn't need that — it was a gesture from our hosts.
     So we climbed out on the quayside. Hedia escorted us the length of the dock through a corridor of armed Rris and armored Rris. They didn't stand to ramrod-straight attention as a human honor guard might do, but they stood with halberds planted butt-down and held upright and strung with bunting and lamps to light the way. On a dark winter morning it almost made the scene cheerful.
     The Racing Pigeon waited at the end of the pier, smoke trickling from the stacks and every fitting polished to a neurotic sheen. All lines were tied with precision; paint was fresh and bright; ice crusted surfaces around the dock, but there was none on the ship. We stopped at the gangplank, where the captain and guard commander stepped forward to meet Hedia. Words were exchanged. Bows. Then she led the way on board.
     I glanced at the Mediators, but they followed without hesitation with their duffels slug over shoulders. The rest of us joined them.
     Our luggage had been loaded. Land-of-Water guards and staff were aboard and accommodated. Our own accommodation was the same — that same expensive little cabin. Our luggage was there, the heater was ticking and gurgling away. A civilized way to travel. We'd have to enjoy it while we could.
     The Racing Pigeon weighed anchor a half-hour after dawn was a blush in the sky. It was a powered vessel, but I think the captain still thought in sails as it rode the outgoing tide. I stood at the stern and watched the city fall away. There was no fancy sendoff, no brass band playing, no crowds waving farewell as the ship pulled away across the harbor. A bell rang out somewhere on shore, pealing across the water. Gulls screamed in return. I was the only one on board there. Until I realized there was someone at my shoulder.
     "Forget something?" Jenes'ahn asked.
     "I don't remember," I said.
     She snorted and watched the city recede behind us.
     "You found it, then," I said quietly. Of course they had: I wouldn't be on board if they hadn't.
     "A."
     "Boilers?"
     "Boilers."
     I just nodded. That made sense. "Not too obvious, was it?"
     A growl. "We know our work. There was only the one."
     I hoped so. I hoped the government hadn't mislaid any more of those clockwork IEDs. There was still the possibility of some other form of sabotage, or someone going to the powder magazine with a match, but I had to find some degree of trust in my hosts' capabilities at some point.
     "And that other matter?"
     She didn't speak for a few long seconds, then growled, "You think that should concern you?"
     "If it might mean someone will be waiting to surprise us, then yes, I do."
     The mediator turned to stare hard at me, as if I might be hiding something. Finally she said, "Some... interesting trails lead from there. We are still following them."
     "Well, happy hunting then."
     She hesitated, then slapped a hand on the railing and stalked off. Tail lashing behind her. A good sign, in a way — would they be on board if they thought there was a serious risk?
     The signal lights in the harbor towers were still burning against the dawn sky. The ship churned its way between them, smoke rising into the still air and engine thumping away belowdecks. When we cleared the breakwater the headwaters to the bay proper stretched away to the south. They'd been right about the weather: the storm had blown itself out and we might have a couple of days of leeway before the next front blew in. Time to get over the worst of the Bay and the unpredictable weather that would bring.
     One other figure was propping up the portside railing that morning, watching the city recede behind us. Makepeace was lost in an oversized cloak she'd acquired from somewhere, staring at the rooftops and smokestacks of Red Leaves. I saw a gust of breath as she sighed and turned away.
     "Missing it already?" I asked.
     "Huhn?" she flinched. If she'd missed me on the deck she was really somewhere else. "Oh, sir. No, sir. It's just... I..." she trailed off and ducked her chin down into the folds of her cloak, not looking entirely happy.
     "Problems?"
     "No, sir..."
     "Michael."
     "Yes, sir. It's just... back to Shattered Water. Back to being a student."
     "That's so bad?"
     "Not bad, as such. Just..."
     "Another 'just'. Must be serious."
     "Yes, sir."
     Goddamn it... "Look, Makepeace. Do you want to tell me or not? I'm not the best for advice, but I don't judge."
     Her ears flicked, then she snapped her jaws. "Sir, they took me seriously. I was the representative from Shattered Water. From the University with access to you. To what you know. They listened to me. They respected me. It was a pleasant change."
     I nodded. I thought I understood that. "And perhaps it'll work at the other end as well," I suggested. "The representative to Bluebetter. Perhaps you could start your own curriculum."
     "You could teach classes," she offered and I took a second to realize it was intended as a joke.
     "I'm sure the Guild would love that," I said and she chittered as the city receded behind us. "But you know, I did say I would put in a few words for you with the University. I think they might listen to that."
     "They would. Thank you, sir," she said, then ducked her head and stalked off toward the pointy end of the ship where others had gathered, more interested in where we were going. I gave the dwindling city of Red Leaves a final look, then went to join them.

The journey back upriver was like a replay of our journey down to Red Leaves. Only in reverse, and at half-speed.
     We made good time cutting across the head of what I'd known as the Chesapeake Bay. The weather remained cold but clear, meaning the bay had only a mild chop slapping against the hull as the paddle wheels churned on their way. It was when we entered the lower reaches of the river that things slowed right down. The ship kept moving forward, but it turned into a purposeful slog against the current. The countryside didn't pass by quite as quickly. Scabs and floes of ice spun their way downstream and glanced from the metal prow or splintered beneath the paddles. There were backwaters where ice had crumbled and packed itself into dirty debris that looked more like mounded dirt than frozen water.
     So, whereas the voyage downstream had been a matter of days, the reverse trip was slower. So much slower.
     But it was better than the monotonous, confined discomfort of a carriage, and there didn't seem to be anyone trying to kill me.
     Time was occupied. Grey mornings and afternoons were filled by lessons in the saloon. From Chihirae and from Rraerch and from the Mediators. I was still functionally useless at reading and writing and we made little progress on that. There seemed to be something fundamental I was missing, and I couldn't figure out if I was missing something in the lessons or there was a difference in the way they processed the text. But Chihirae could still give me help with vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. That was something that the peanut gallery still found amusing.
     Rraerch assisted with history, especially with lessons about local history and the relations between some of the nations. She had anecdotes and stories about dealing amongst some of the countries and merchant houses that had never made it into the history books. Those ranged from amusing to salacious to downright Machiavellian, but they did help me further understand just what Rris considered normal.
     The Mediator Guild's instruction was less interesting. They seemed to be interested in what I considered normal. Those hours were spent locked in a private cabin with me describing details of my old life and trying to answer their questions. Of which there were more than a few. I talked about growing up, my life at home, my school life, college, life after that, my work and life and the rest of the world gone away.
     It hurt. A deep ache as glimpses of another life were dredged up from the murk of memory to be presented to these mediators for the briefest of moments.
     They listened, they took notes.
     I didn't tell them precisely everything.
     There were lighter moments: standing at the rail and watching the world and wildlife go past; Evening drinks and discussions in the saloon; Learning a game of chance involving small sticks of bone and paint at which I seemed to consistently lose; Midnight under a freezing moon listening to alien music drifting up from where someone belowdecks had an instrument and some skill. There were evenings sitting and trying to make smalltalk, which isn't so easy when dealing with a species which has different social values than yourself. They aren't gregarious, they aren't monogamous and family-oriented, and they don't go to the game on weekends. It was all part of the learning experience.
     And in the dark of night Chihirae lay beside me in the narrow bed, feeling each other's heartbeat through the pulse of the engine. Sometimes we did what felt right at the time, be that being as close as two people can get, holding each other in the dark, or just laying back to back and trying to sleep. She relaxed a little, but those moods were still mercurial, more so as we moved upriver. A couple of times I woke in the small hours to find her twitching, making small noises. Once she kicked out in her sleep. I was able to get the gouges in my calf bound up without anyone noticing.
     Apart from that it was an uneventful time. Nothing exploded. Nothing caught fire. There were no figures lurking in the trees or midnight ambushes. There were a couple of stops at depots to take on more fuel. No-one off or on during those stopovers — the Mediators enforced that rule. The most exciting occurrence was a paddle blade breaking on a chunk of ice. Several hours were spent moored while wet and cold crew hammered and wrenched a replacement into place. Job done, we set off again.
     So, just over a week later, we approached the last leg of that part of the journey as one evening the walls of Yeitas'mas hove into view.

Paddle wheels spalled and thumped against ice and water. The stones and old timbers of the quayside edged closer as the captain edged the vessel into the lee of a pier. He'd taken the Pigeon a short ways upstream, and then let the current draw it back down again and ease the ship position. On shore, teams were waiting to grab the lines and haul us in the rest of the way. Polished metal glinted in quite a few places around the docks where guards armed with pikes were forming a cordon to keep the curious at bay.
     Dusk. The town was already shadowed by the western hills. Overhead, the last of the sun slanted in across the valley, painting the hilltops, the high walls of the old fortress, the trickles of smoke from chimneys, the spire of the signal tower in shades of gold. Below that creeping line the shadows were a hazy cold-blue contrast, taking a second for the eyes to adjust to detail. No lights in the town yet — of course the locals didn't need them. The only lights to compete with the setting sun were the occasional flurry of sparks coughed from the ship's stack.
     Our little party stood on the upper deck and watched as lines were thrown, hauled in, made fast. Then the ever-present thump of the engines wound down and the gangplank was run out and clattered into place. Several of the armed guards stationed themselves there.
     "Ah," Rraerch declared. "Looks like they're done." She slapped her palms on the freezing copper rail and frowned. "We really couldn't have gone the bit further to Summer Breaks. That would have avoided a few... issues."
     "Apologies," Rohinia said. "There are reasons, I assure you."
     She sighed visibly. "Very well."
     "And I, for one, will welcome a quiet and motionless night," Chaeitch added, leaning on the rail and waving his pipe. "There's a very pleasant inn just up the broad way to the square."
     "I'm sure the local lord will be expecting us to lodge with him," Rraerch said. "We will have to deal with that."
     "That may not be necessary," Rohinia said. "But I'm afraid we must wait a while longer."
     "Really?" Rraerch said. "I believe we are expected. There are guards there already."
     "A," the Mediator agreed. "We are expecting more."
     I thought I had an idea what was going on. I grinned into the dusk. "You sent a message, a?"
     The Mediator's head didn't twitch. "Perhaps," he said.
     "Did you get an answer?"
     "That will be interesting to find out, a?" he said.
     So we waited. And nothing continued to happen for a few minutes. Down on shore I could see officers exchanging urgent whispers and looking uncertain. And then there was a disturbance, a commotion back on the docks as a knot of guards parted reluctantly to allow a spearhead of dark-coated Rris to stalk through. More Mediators than I'd seen out on the streets before. They spread out, forming a thin gray line between the armored guards and the gangplank. A drab line of crows, but they had armor of their own under those coats and probably outgunned the local guard. Pistols and longarms were carried openly; their close-in wetwork gear tucked away, but still glinting when light caught it right.
     "That's your answer?" Rraerch asked. She sounded as if she didn't entirely understand
     "Part of it," Rohinia said and picked up his kit before making for the companionway down to the main deck. The other Rris exchanged looks before following.
     On shore confusion and frustration were getting to know one another. The Bluebetter guards wanted jurisdiction, our Land-of-Water guards insisted on doing their jobs, dockworkers were wanting to unload the cargo and baggage, and the Mediators just walked in and took over the whole show. By the time we got ashore the line of Bluebetter troops were standing off at a distance, facing the company of Mediators.
     We descended the gangplank behind the Mediators. I was uncomfortably aware of how I stood out — head and shoulders above the Rris around me. And there were plenty of curious eyes around the docks and surrounding buildings watching the show. Some were doubtless taking notes. I stepped down onto icy cobbles littered with the detritus of industry and made way for the others following, looking around at the various armed factions.
     Rohinia glanced around at his partner, then strode toward the center of the Mediators. A similarly-dressed individual came forward to meet him. They held out hands toward each other for a second and I got a glimpse of metal being held, then they tucked whatever they'd flashed away. Badges? There was discussion after that. Papers produced and examined on both sides. Tails lashed. An agreement was reached. He turned and stalked back to us.
     "Constable?" Hedia spoke up. "No more problems I hope?"
     "We stay the night," he said. "Accommodation will be made available at the Guild Hall."
     "The Guild?" Hedia's tail fluffed up. "Constable, I'm sure his lordship is waiting to welcome us. The keep will be prepared. There will be comfortable lodgings. He will not want to..."
     "The Guild has sent notification," Rohinia said. "There will be no interference. This is important. The Hall is the safest location at the moment. And they want to talk to Mikah."
     'What's their intention?" Rraerch immediately snapped
     "What's he done now?" Chaeitch asked.
     Rohinia looked from one to the other. "We have some matters to discuss with him. He isn't in any danger. From us."
     "Broken stones!" Rraerch growled and looked around at the scene on the docks. "And you think he could be in danger from some of these."
     "It is a possibility," Rohinia said. "We are going. Now."
     Mediators in front and behind. It wasn't exactly a request. We went, and our escort went with us. The local guards milled around looking annoyed and confused, but they kept their distance. Jenes'ahn was giving orders to our own Shattered Water guards. She looked happy.
     Up into the town. The fortress was the bluff above, atop a steep northern cliff that overlooked the river bend there. The southern side sloped, so the road and town climbed and looped around that way. The Mediator Guild Hall was in the southeastern quarter, on the far slopes of the prominence away from the docks and the river. It overlooked the eastern landward gate and the farmland and valley hills beyond.
     Not a long walk, but it got dark fast. The moon came out, crawling over the valley ridges with just enough light that I could see not to walk into walls or trip over awkward cobblestones. When the angle was right, that is — there were enough streets that were black holes to my eyes. The town wasn't large enough to have streetlights, and of course the Mediators didn't want light because it drew attention. Chihirae stayed close and helped me when I needed it, but walking on ice in freezing blackness wasn't my idea of fun and it slowed us down. By the time we arrived it was night proper with the stars out and the air cold enough to form frost in my beard.
     Fireworks and celebration and pageantry and welcoming speeches, there was none of that. The Hall gates opened onto a courtyard that was so much like the other Halls I'd visited: a square of snow-dusted cobbles and a few bare trees overlooked by utilitarian buildings with all the grace and charm of an Edwardian borstal. Lights burned in a few windows, but most were dark. The only real acknowledgement we received were the Mediators with lanterns who received us.
     The front doors were serious pieces of undecorated heavy wood reinforced with iron strips. And like other Halls I'd seen, there were old gouges in the wood. Axes, it looked like, old and faded into the timber. Inside was dark and cold and if it hadn't been for our guides I'd have been blind. But they led us through echoing corridors and up wooden stairs to a hall that was marginally better appointed than the rest of the place. There were a couple of lamps lit, just enough to light the doors lining it.
     "These rooms are available to you," Rohinia said. "Rest tonight. Tomorrow we continue on to Seasons Break. Mikah, the Hall Master will speak with you a little later."
     "About what?" I had to ask.
     "They'll tell you," he said. "Get some rest."
     "Oh, right. I can feel the concern just melting away," I sighed.
     He cocked his head slightly, then opened the closest door. "Your ladyship, you appear to be able to persuade this one better than anyone else. Would you mind?"
     Chihirae snorted, then jabbed me with a claw. "Come on, you."
     "Very well, you ladyship... ow!" I rubbed my arm as I ducked my head under the lintel and stepped inside with her close behind.
     "We will wake you tomorrow," Rohinia said.
     "Thank you, constable," Chihirae replied and said something else but I was inside.
     There was a single little oil lamp flickering in there. The only other light was faint moonlight through a small, high window. Just enough light to see the spartan room, the white walls, the tiled floor, the small bed that was little more than a pallet. And jerked around when the door closed behind me as the Mediators left me...
     "Mikah?" Chihirae was staring at me.
     I came back to the present. Took a breath. "Oh. Sorry."
     She was still staring, eyes black. "What's wrong."
     "I just..." I started to say I'd been in rooms like that before, but that would just bring more questions I couldn't answer. "It's... small?"
     Her ears twitched, then she looked around at the cell. Which was what it was. "A little. But those inns are worse, a? At least the floor here doesn't crawl."
     "A. There is that."
     There was a tray by the bed, with a plate with a lump of something not quite unlike stew and bread on it. Chihirae inspected that, laid her ears back, then turned prodded the bed with a hairy foot before sitting herself down. She looked up at me and patted the grey blanket there a couple of times. "You might as well make yourself comfortable.
     I levered myself down where she indicated, settling my heavy coat to sit beside her on the bed. From down there the room did seem larger. Well, taller anyway. Perhaps the Mediators didn't have guest rooms. They probably didn't have many guests.
     A moment of silence. There were quiet voices out in the hall. Doors closing.
     She sighed. "You know why we're here?"
     "I'm not sure."
     "You sounded as you had an idea back on the boat."
     "Oh. That." I flopped my hand in a shrug. "I thought I'd noticed something back in Red Leaves. I mentioned it to the Mediators. Perhaps I was right."
     "Stranger things have happened, a? What was it?"
     "I probably shouldn't say. I might be wrong. And you don't want to have them asking you any questions."
     She was absolutely silent for half a minute. "Was it something you did?"
     "This time... it actually wasn't. But it was something I knew about and they didn't. It could explain some things."
     "Huhn," she huffed, noncommittally.
     "You'll be okay?" I asked. "Staying here for the night?"
     "It's not so bad," she said, then flopped over, laying herself down with her head on my legs. "Bed's comfortable. Pillow's a bit lumpy though."
     "Suffer," I said. Almost automatically my hand started petting the soft hairy thing in my lap. "They should leave you alone. It's not about you."
     "But you're still nervous," she said. "I can smell it, remember. It's not just the size of this room."
     I scratched gently and stared at the oil lamp flickering in its milky glass globe. "They're Mediators. I never really understand what they want. I think I'm right, but I can't be sure."
     "You should have some more confidence in yourself. You have made it this far."
     "What's left of me has."
     "That just shows that you can get up after you've been swatted down. The cubs that do that are the ones who climb highest. You have climbed a long way, my Mikah."
     I didn't know what to say to that. All I had was, "Thank you, my teacher."
     She chittered and lay quietly while I gently stroked, scratched the places she liked. Her breathing turned to a low rumble I felt through my bones and she curled up some more.
     I sat like that for some time. I was almost feeling at peace when the latch rattled. The door opened and Jenes'ahn stepped in, a dim lantern in hand. She stopped. Stared. Her ears twitched back and then upright again. "Time to go," she said.
     I extricated myself. My leg had gone to sleep. And as careful as I was, the snoring lump twitched and stirred and licked her chops. "You're going?" she asked.
     "Looks like it," I said. "Sorry to disturb you."
     She huffed and sat herself up. I stood, facing the Mediator. She looked me up and down.
     "You're armed," Jenes'ahn said.
     "Can't be too careful in places like this."
     She blinked. Just once. Then said, "Leave them."
     So I shrugged out of the armored coat. Considered where to hang it, then draped it around Chihirae's shoulders. She started to say something, then just pulled it around herself. It sat on her like a tent with a fuzzy head poking out the top. After the warmth the heavy garment had provided, the air in the Hall was noticeably chilly. Jenes'ahn gave another one of those looks and then snorted and led the way out.
     Two more Mediators waiting outside. They fell in behind while Jenes'ahn took point with her lamp lighting the way with its feeble glow. All the other doors in the hall were closed and solid enough that I couldn't hear a thing from behind them.
     More hallways. Worn carpets and dented plaster. Clerical offices and studies. Rooms with dusty windows and walls lined with small drawers. Armor and weapons in locked racks. Like other halls I'd been in, it was a weird mix of bureaucratic machinery and martial nastiness. The inner workings of a part of Rris society that had no counterpart in my own.
     Another hall had more lights burning. There were open offices where a few Mediators were working, doing paperwork at low writing desks. Jenes'ahn hung the lantern on a hook by the closed door at the end before opening it. The room on the other side was an antechamber with all the accoutrements of a secretaries office and another door, this one padded with old green leather. The Rris in there turned from putting some bulky volumes back on a bookshelf and literally froze at the sight of me.
     "He's ready?" Jenes'ahn said.
     The other twitched back to here and now. "A, Constable. And waiting."
     A secretary. But a Mediator secretary, with a knife at the waist. And a stare that followed me as I followed Jenes'ahn.
     Another study. A private office. There were the shelves of books, cabinets of curiosities, the low desk, an ice-rimed window, a stove frugally dishing out just enough heat to keep ink liquid. Even with that, the air was cold, musty. When I ducked through the door the Mediator behind the desk looked past Jenes'ahn at me. The light from the candle dancing in a sudden draught made the shadows on his face writhe even as both eyes flashed titanium.
     "It's larger than one was led to expect."
     "You don't notice so much after a while," she said. "Mikah. Sit."
     That was annoying enough that I waited just long enough before doing so, taking one of the creaking leather cushions on the rug in front of the Mediator Hall Master's desk. He sat framed by the dark window behind him: an older Rris, bearing grey stripes across his muzzle and one ear with a literal bite-mark out of it. The brown-and gray leather vest he was wearing over a light jerkin was heavy enough to be used as armor. Perhaps had been, if the gouges in it really were knife marks.
     Rohinia was last to join us, closing the door behind himself and crossing the room to place a sheaf of papers on the Master's desk. Then he turned and handed me my laptop case before sitting himself on the spare cushion to my right. Jenes'ahn took the one on the other side.
     I took a quick look at the case. It was closed and seemed undamaged. That didn't really settle my nerves.
     The Hall Master stared at me for a while. Then he said, "You can talk."
     I looked at the Mediators flanking me, but they didn't seem phased by the question. "Apparently so, sir."
     Jenes'ahn closed her eyes and hissed softly. The Hall Master didn't bat an eyelid. "Now I see what she means. Do you know why you're here?"
     "Because you listened to me and investigated the signal towers and found that another Guild was using them to trade information faster than anyone else around?"
     Now he paused. Glanced from one constable to the other. "You told him?"
     "No," I sighed, "I told them. Remember?"
     He stared at me again. "Is he usually like this?" he asked.
     "Yes, sir," Jenes'ahn said. "I'm afraid so."
     "Your reports make more sense now," he said.
     I decided not to point out that I was, in fact, sitting right there.
     He didn't stop staring at me. "How did you know about this?"
     "My kind used something like that system. I knew it had uses beyond what Bluebetter was claiming they used it for. It's not uncommon where I come from. They have explained that?" I gestured to the pair flanking me.
     "They have told me... something." He looked at Rohinia. "And I am not sure how I can believe it. Yet, apparently you have something quite convincing, which I believe I require."
     I thought I understood that correctly. I looked to the Mediators beside me. "Anything in particular?"
     "Your usual examples will do," Jenes'ahn said.
     "Anything you don't want shown?"
     She paused, then just said, "He's a Guild Master."
     "Guess not," I shrugged and opened the laptop.
     When I turned it on the screen was brighter than the candlelight in the room. The shadows behind the Hall Master stiffened, ears flicking back and then up again. I saw muscles in his jaw flex, but otherwise he didn't react. I ran the usual show, the videos showing parts of my world. I kept the screen turned towards him: I didn't need to see it. When it'd run its course I hit another couple of buttons and he sat in silence. No-one else said anything.
     "That is... interesting," he finally said. "It is real? It isn't a magic lantern show?"
     "They seem to be stored images of his world, sir," Rohinia said. "I don't quite understand how it works, but he can store and show such images. It is essentially a portable library."
     "That is... dangerous," the Hall Master said.
     "A," Rohinia agreed. "Which is why it is kept locked. Only he can open it. It requires codes only he knows."
     "These codes could be broken?"
     "It would be very difficult," I said.
     He looked to my right. "Your opinion?"
     "Usual techniques most likely wouldn't work," Rohinia said. "It's a form of Johis gear, albeit incredibly complex. Without a comprehensive knowledge of the working principles behind it, it would be more likely to damage it. It would require... other methods to unlock. And even if that were successful, the language and entire contents are... bizarre. No-one but him speaks them"
     The Hall Master's eyes flicked back to me. "Very well. And how does this knowledge apply to this situation? Everything the Guild has heard about the signal towers has told us they're nothing but a drain on the coffers. There's been no hint that they could be so effective. How does your... tale relate to this?"
     "My kind had something like those towers. They weren't as disastrous as Bluebetter claims — they worked well enough. I found it odd that these ones were supposed to be such a foolish move yet the Money Lenders Guild in Red Leaves had their own tower."
     "You knew what they were doing?"
     "Not exactly. No. But those kind of people doesn't usually waste money on something that wastes money. I assumed it had something to do with that. I don't know exactly what though."
     He turned to the other Mediators again, as if looking for some verification from them. If they gave it, I didn't see it. He said, "I have only just been informed of your part in this. The Guild has used the hilltop system and Guild codes to alert other halls, including this one, but detailed information wasn't possible. The constables here have filled in details and provided reports and documentation from Red Leaves, but I have still to go through the bulk of those.
     "Those under investigation have been allowed to continue their operations. We have been watching. They have broken laws, both this guild's and their own. Codes were involved. They used substitution tables... you know what they are? Characters are converted to other figures based on a pre-determined table. Anyone who intercepts the message and does not have that table available cannot read the contents."
     A one time pad? "I think I understand."
     "Good. The Guild found some of those tables. Those codes were broken. Others were not so straightforward. A series of signals in a cipher we don't have were forwarded from the tower in this city toward Land-of-Water."
     "They don't have that system," Jenes'ahn said.
     The Hall Master's head twitched back. "A. They don't need one just to receive the signal. The operators don't know the content of the messages. It's all code. They just think it's military business. How far can this system be seen?"
     "I'm not sure," I said. "On a good day anyone with a telescope and high ground might be able to see it from thirty kilometers away."
     "Summer Breaks is a good deal closer. As are the ones we believe are the intended recipients."
     "You know who they are?" I asked.
     "The assailants from our journey here," Rohinia said. "They had a spyglass. They used flash codes. They seem to be an unregistered organization. You said your doctor verified as much. We are starting to believe they were hired and assembled just for the purpose of dealing with you. Their patrons are most likely preparing them to receive us on the way back."
     I looked around. They knew that much. They had a plan. "How does this involve me?"
     "Can you break those codes? I was lead to understand your device there runs on such numbers."
     A cipher like that? I frowned. "I... no. I don't think so. That is not my area of expertise at all, but from what I know, that sort of cipher is very strong. If it's done properly it's proof against breaking."
     "You are sure?" he cocked his head slightly, studying me.
     "I am," I said, uncertainly. Was there something behind that question I didn't understand? "And I am also very bad with your written words. I would be... useless at anything to do with that."
     "Is this true?"
     "He is correct, sir," Jenes'ahn offered. "His reading and writing skills are surprisingly poor."
     The Hall Master growled and settled back, running a claw tip though a cheek tuft while he stared at me.
     "Well," he finally said. "It would have been easier for all had you been able to assist. Instead, we will have to follow the trail into the thickets. We know they are in there, but we don't know exactly where they are or what their numbers are. They will make an attempt on you, that much is certain. And again we don't know where or when. We will change that.
     "Your party will proceed as planned through to Summer Breaks. We will tempt them into action."
     I felt a sinking feeling. "You want me to be bait," I said.
     "Not you," he said and his ears flicked back, just a fraction. "Your teacher."
     And that came like a punch in the gut. "What... No!"
     "This is not a matter for discussion."
     Rohinia's hand was on my arm before I could move. "Mikah," he cautioned and his claws pricked. Just once.
     I met his stare. Then the Hall Master's. "She's not part of this. Leave her be."
     "She is the best choice for this."
     "And she's also not a piece to be used for games! She's been through enough! You want my cooperation, you won't do this."
     "And if you want protection for her, you will cooperate."
     I flinched. Badly. My heart lurched and I felt the blood drain from my face. And I know he saw. He hadn't taken his eyes off me as he said that and there's no way he missed that reaction. Rohinia's hand stayed where it was.
     I could lunge. I could get violent, but they were fast and dangerous and that would get me nowhere. I could scream and rage, but the Guild was used to that and again it'd get me nowhere. I took a deep breath. Then another. "Why her?
     "Because you are important and she is not, no matter what you may believe. And since you are always well guarded they are more likely to find her an appealing target."
     "You're wrong about her being unimportant. She is. To me."
     "And that is why she's the obvious choice," he snapped back. "They consider that a weakness of yours, so it makes her a target. But they want her as [leverage], so they wouldn't harm her. If everything goes to plan, she is in no danger."
     "And how often do plans go to plan?" I snapped. "This whole voyage was planned out, and look what happened. Give them a better target. Give them what they actually want."
     "And I have said: you are too important."
     "And you also said there is no danger."
     "That is not what I said."
     "And if I were them I would expect just what you're planning. So they let you waste your efforts there and go after me while you're distracted. You are expecting them to do the same things they tried last time. They won't."
     "And why not?"
     I sighed. "Mai told me they were led by such a fool. Once."
     "Mai... the doctor."
     "A," I said. "She was able to manipulate them into overextending themselves. Now, she's not there to do that and there's a good chance they replaced that idiot. Likely with someone capable. What kind of plan would a capable leader use?"
     Rohinia said, "Something simple and direct and well-timed." A pause. Consideration. "A fast-striking attack. Most likely when we are stopped for the night somewhere. While most are sleeping. That could mean anywhere along the trail."
     "But you know they're near Summer Breaks," I pointed out. "Give them a target they can't resist. Draw them in."
     "The teacher is still a better option."
     "And there's a chance they wouldn't be interested in her at all. There was that last attempt."
     "The bomb on the ship," Rohinia provided. "That would have likely killed many."
     "A. They might be serious now — not playing around with kidnapping. She wouldn't interest them. Give them something they would be interested in. A mistake: an opening that's too tempting. That might make them rush in and try and take rather than shoot from a distance."
     "And why would we make a mistake?"
     "Do they know you know about the signals? You have kept that quiet, a?"
     An ear twitched back. "That has been kept within the Guild."
     "Then they probably assume their communications are secret. They assume we don't know they are waiting. Or where they are. So they could expect that we might get careless.
     Prepare something in Summer Breaks. It's a big town, easier to move groups without being noticed, a?"
     "It would be easier to get our people into position," the Hall Master said.
     You've done it before, I didn't say, remembering the attempted Mediator ambush on me in another city. That didn't go so well for them.
     "Yes, sir," Rohinia said. "However, they will be guested at the keep. I think anyone would think very carefully before attempting anything against security like that."
     "Then perhaps outside the keep?" I said.
     A snort. "Only a fool would be wandering around outside the keep's protection."
     "Huhn," Jenes'ahn growled quietly and looked very pointedly at me. "Then perhaps our luck is changing."

Hours later there was plenty of life in the corridors and offices of the Mediator Hall. Lamps burned in smokey offices. Paiges and apprentices hurried from room to room carrying message rolls. Mediators passed by, armed and walking with purpose and barely sparing me a glance. Through a grubby window I glimpsed a group of farmers and townspeople and merchants gathered around a table, listening attentively while a Mediator pointed out details on a map. I suspected they weren't farmers and merchants.
     A stark contrast to the dark silence of the two Mediators walking beside me.
     "He threatened her," I growled, shivering. It was freezing. Whenever we passed a lamp I fancied I could hear my clouds of breath tinkling.
     "He did what is necessary," Rohinia returned.
     "It was not necessary. He threatened her to try and make me do something I can't do. Is that going to happen again? Is that going to happen if I choose not to tell you something?"
     "Is that likely to happen?"
     "Absolutely. You can figure out mustard gas on your own. But she was to be left alone!"
     "Different branches," Rohinia growled. "Different interpretations."
     I exhaled. Just exhaling frustration, not trusting words. "And how often will that happen?"
     No reply.
     "As often as needed, right?" I provided.
     "What was that noise?"
     "An observation on the general state of the universe," I said.
     She favored me with a look that was equal parts glare and evaluation. "It would be a more [something] place were you not to try to disrupt it so often. You've deliberately placed yourself in harm's way, and no matter how you try to justify it, there's no sane reason for it."
     "It makes sense to me."
     "Precisely," she returned. "If you would listen to the advice of those who know better..."
     "Constable," Rohinia growled.
     She took a breath, flicked her ears. "You got what you asked for. You spoke. We listened. Now it's your turn."
     I started to retort, then clamped my jaws on that and just heaved the breath out in a gust of pale frustration. "A. She stays safe."
     "That was the agreement," Rohinia said and we turned into a hall that was familiar: rows of doors. "And you will do your part?"
     "A," I said and we were at that one door. I stopped there and looked at the Mediators: scarred trouble in the darkness, armored in their coats and fur fluffed against the cold. "And this will be the end of it?"
     "That is the intention," Rohinia said. "Those who have the Guild's interest will be apprehended. We have evidence and after this endeavor the knife will be taken from their very hands."
     "That simple, huh?"
     I couldn't see enough to see if that irked them. Rohinia simply said, "We'll move on to Summer Breaks tomorrow. Get some sleep."
     The lamp inside had gone out, so when the door closed behind me the blackness was like a cool velvet. I stood still, trying to let my eyes adjust to a glimmer of moonlight through the high window. It was all shades of black.
     "This way," a quiet voice said from my right, from the bed.
     I took careful steps until I could nudge the pallet with my foot.
     "What was that all about?" Chihirae's voice asked. "'End of it'? They are doing something?"
     "Maybe. I think so," I said as I shrugged out of my shirt. Nowhere to hang it, so I set it down next to the bed. I hoped. "They have... something. They know who's behind all this trouble; what they're saying; who they're talking to."
     I managed to remove my boots, and then carefully knelt. "Here," a furry little hand took mine and guided me. I settled beside her. The bed was too small and the sheets were thin, but a fever-warm body pressed close.
     "So they can end it?" There was anxious hope there.
     "They have an idea to catch the ones at Three Birds Fall."
     A moment. "They know who's behind it?"
     "A. I think so."
     A hand laid on my chest. Claws pricked my skin. "Then why not just go after them? Why bother with those [thugs]?"
     "I think the Guild doesn't like the idea of a group like that for hire. Especially if they're such an unknown quantity."
     She hissed softly. "Are there such?"
     "Apparently so. They want them. Then they take their masters as well."
     "And this will work?"
     "If everything goes well... Maybe."
     A low growl. "That is not reassuring."
     "Yeah, I know. I don't fully understand what they're doing..."
     She tensed and I felt her lever herself up to look down at me. "They're not involving you, are they?"
     "I'm already involved," I said. "I'm involved as much as one can be. But the Guild knows these others are talking and planning. And they intend to catch them before they can get close to us."
     And that was the truth. And yet it wasn't. Not entirely. And perhaps she sensed that because she was quiet for quite a while. "And now you support the Guild's plan. Mikah, this doesn't feel right to me. What're you hiding?"
     "Everything they haven't told me. Which is most of it. They told me it is going to happen, but not exactly what. No details."
     "Their secrets, a?"
     "A," I said. And again it was true. In a way. "The good news is that we're being put up in the best accommodation in Summer Breaks. They said real beds and baths for a few nights."
     "Are you trying to distract me?"
     "Is it working?"
     "Mikah..." the hiss was a warning.
     "I'm sorry," I protested. "The Guild has said we will be safe."
     A low rumble. "You usually have such a low opinion of the Guild, and this time you believe them?"
     "This time I really want to."
     She was quite for a while, perhaps studying me in the darkness. Then I heard a sigh and she settled down against me. "And this will be an end to these attacks, you say?"
     "Get these ones and then their masters. Root and stem. If we do that, then, yes." I said that and I fervently wished it could be true, but I couldn't guarantee it would happen.
     She growled again. "Rot and plague. I'm just... tired of all this. If there's a chance..." She trailed off, vented a sound that somewhere between a hiss and a sigh. Then she slapped a hand on my chest, claws just kissing. "There's baths, you say?"
     "Apparently."
     "A bath would be good," she finally said and slapped a hand down on my chest. "And not just for me."

The next morning we headed upriver toward Summer Breaks. No ship this time — we were travelling the river road and that leg of the journey wasn't far at all.
     We departed via the upstream gate at first light. A convoy of carriages and wagons escorted by soldiers riding elk. Steam trickled off the animals' hides in the morning chill, tack and armor gleaming in the morning light. Weapons to hand.
     The gate wasn't the edge of town. It was the edge of the walled city, but beyond that the town kept going. And as it did so it spread out, no longer confined by the walls. There were a lot of inns along the road, along with their stableyards and all the industries and housing for the people that supported them. And as we got further out the buildings spread out more. There were scattered houses and manors. There were farms and their outbuildings, orchards, fields marching off along the valley to the right in a patchwork of white and gray, delineated by hedgerows and copses. Herd of bison dotted that landscape that stretched away into the morning mists.
     Away on the other side of the road was the river, occasionally visible through gaps in trees or as the road crested a small rise. No boats out there at that time, just lumps of ice drifting downstream.
     I yawned. Again.
     "You did sleep?" Rraerch asked, peering at me.
     "A," I said. "Well, sort of." I couldn't help but glance at Jenes'ahn. "The bed was... small."
     Perhaps she misunderstood. "Well, tonight should be better. Ah Ties rates the Burning Tree Inn very highly. Although, constable, I still think the keep would suit our requirements."
     "There are security issues," Jenes'ahn said. "We advise the inn."
     At the speed the carriages didn't travel it took time to scroll through that landscape. The town receded behind us. Ahead of us the long, rounded mountain forming the northern side of the valley hove into view: an elongated prominence covered with winter-bare trees rising a couple of hundred meters and stretching from the river away into the distance. An individual rise amongst serried ranks of rolling hills descended from glaciation-worn mountains that gave the Rippled Lands their name. Tall enough and steep enough to be a serious impediment to animal-drawn traffic.
     So, the road cut around the end of that ridge, wedged in between the river and a cutting in the rock of the land. A gatehouse stood on the Bluebetter side, along with a queue of carts and animals and other travelers. Our escorts flashed papers and the waiting traffic was shouted and shoved aside for our convoy to pass through.
     The road was narrow through there. Out the left was a drop to the riverbank which was nothing but a dozen meters of scraggly scrub and rocks littered with tangled driftwood and frozen mud and ice. On our right was the rock wall of the cutting gouged through the end of the hill. It loomed over us. Toward the middle of the passage it even hung over the road.
     If there was ever a place for something nasty to happen, that was it. And the guards and Mediators thought so also — there were outriders up there making sure no-one else was, fingers were on triggers, and nerves were on edge. The rough cliff face passed by outside the window. Marks from the picks used to hack it out were still visible in the stone. Small trees and bushes sprouted from cracks in the rock and sheets of icicles hung where water probably trickled down in warmer times.
     Tense, but uneventful.
     Just around the headland the Land-of-Water border post was a mirror of the Bluebetter side. The queues were bypassed and officials appeared and other pieces of paper were flashed. The officials melted aside and we passed through and were back in Land-of-Water.
     Summer Breaks was another half-hour ride through a snowy landscape that was a great deal like the one on the other side of the hill: the same farms and orchards. The town had grown in a similar manner, with outlying villages that weren't quite suburbs merging into extramural streets and houses and businesses: warehouses, granaries, mills, smithies and yards packed with lumber and cattle and stone. The noisy, crowded, dangerous, and reeking industrial places you don't want in a city walls.
     Those walls themselves were a mixture of old curtain walls and the more contemporary sloped ramparts. Gatehouses led through, with a few guards at each — remarkably uninterested-looking sorts who just stepped aside and watched the procession pass by.
     We headed on into town along broad streets lined with stores and traders and guild houses all huddling under a cloud of smokey haze suspended by countless streams of smoke from chimneys. At one time this town had probably been a convenient spot along a muddy track following the river. Then someone stopped and built and others came and things just accreted. And the dirty old track was the telegraph road.
     Streets and then a square. There was a market there, and we were just in time for the midday rush. Stalls were set Rris bustled around, the crowd busy enough to get hackles up again. Guards kept the worst away, but just that activity drew attention as the caravan worked through the square to another avenue. Then a stone gateway. Then into a courtyard large enough for the carriages to circle around. The building opposite was big, solid, with dark stone walls. It looked old. An ivy-draped central hall with a high gabled roof of slate and copper. Three floors of windows looked out over the front court. They were glazed, the mullions and frames painted viridian green that matched the weathered metal on the roof, the sills a terracotta orange. The front entrance was a double-door, also glazed, with a sign board hanging from the wall above. I couldn't read the lettering on that placard, but just below it hung what looked like a very old burnt branch. Another place with history.
     We stopped and climbed out. Chihirae, Chaeitch, Makepeace, and Rohinia joined us from the other carriage. Rraerch stopped alongside Chaeitch and they both looked up at the place. "Bigger than I was expecting. You recommend this, a?"
     "I've stayed here before. The service is exemplary. And their table manages to find dishes you wouldn't expect in such a place."
     A Rris emerged from the inn. A slim individual attired in a neat gray kilt and waistcoat. At the top step the Rris stopped and executed a neat little bow. "Honoreds. Welcome to Burning Tree Inn, the finest on the trail. I am ah Haeratha, manager of the Tree. We were told to expect and welcome exclusive guests from the Palace, so I offer you welcome, hearth, and food, good guests."
     "Ah Haeratha," Rraerch stepped forward, flowing into the protocol. "We thank you and Land-of-Water thanks you."
     "I was informed a valued individual is amongst your number," ah Haeratha said. "Ah Ties — a pleasure to have you with us again."
     Chaeitch puffed himself up. "I greatly anticipate your hospitality again."
     "And would you care to have your bear kept in the stables?"
     That line went down like a china plate on concrete. There was an abrupt silence you could hear a mile off.
     "Do you want to tell him or shall I?" I asked.
     There was a kerfuffle. The Manager was disbelieving, then shocked, then gushingly contrite in the space of the walk to the foyer.
     "Greatest apologies, madam, sir! We weren't notified! There would be a guest of his highness was what your messenger said! There were no other details!"
     "Understandable, I suppose," Rraerch was saying. "He is a surprise to most."
     It was old news to me. I was more interested in looking around. The entryway was small, but opened out into a reception area. It wasn't bright in there. There were old scent carvings and broken weapons hanging on the wood-paneled walls; there was a lot of black wood and brass around; the ceiling was lined with beams that were head-bangingly low for me. The centerpiece was an ornate rug with a decorative table on which stood a vase with an arrangement of what looked like driftwood in it. Beyond that was a counter, much like a hotel reception back home complete with mailboxes and keys on the wall behind. To either side of that were doorways.
     Haeratha ushered us along, beckoning to the entry on the right. We followed, past the suddenly shocked attendants at the counter. I took a look through the left doorway and saw it led to a small antechamber with a staircase going up. Past that was another doorway leading to a public eating area — a big room of sturdy tables and benches and a huge circular fire pit in the center of the room, a style I'd seen before. The doorway to the right mirrored it.
     There was another antechamber, reminiscent of the ones between a host's house and the guest quarters. There was another staircase there. Another doorway which opened onto another open area. This one was more lavish. Textured and watered paper in pale greens and tans covered the walls. Matching rugs laid on polished floors. White-painted trim. There was a conservatory: a bright and warm and more formal dining area with low tables and fine cushions and spreading greenery.
     "The inn and staff are at your disposal, honored guests," Haeratha was saying. "I would beg some time to brief the staff on... on his lordship's..." He looked at me and trailed off. I smiled at him.
     "It's fine," Rraerch sighed. "People do need some time to get accustomed to him."
     Perhaps the manager saw that as a challenge. He drew himself up, almost bristling. "I assure you, madam, my staff are professional. They will act with the utmost decorum and discreetness."
     "Excellent. We will be a couple of days preparing and we ask that disruptions be kept to a minimum. We will most emphatically not be accepting visitors or petitioners. This is understood?"
     "Entirely, madam. The south wing is entirely private and at your disposal. The staff will be... informed."
     "We also have our own cook. He will be overseeing meal preparation for Mikah." She held up a hand as Haeratha took an indignant breath. "This is not a slight against your kitchen. Mikah has requirements. An accidental poisoning would be regarded... poorly. This is understood."
     Not a question. "Absolutely, madam."
     Upstairs was furnished in similar elegance. Wallpaper, rugs, paintings of elk and coaches that were crackled and browned with age, furniture in the hallways. We were shown to rooms there. The best suites Haeratha said with obvious pride.
     Second floor, of course. If you don't have elevators, then the top floors are for the help and staff and other riff-raff. The luxury apartments and suites are on the first or second floors, so the occupants don't have to schlep up several flights and wind up panting or sweating into their cravats.
     I ducked through the doorway. The inn was old and the low overheads were a leftover from shorter days, but the rooms inside looked newer. Walls were plastered clean white or papered in watered green and white Celtic-looking patterns. There were rugs on the floors and matching drapes. Bare wood was painted so the light coming through those south-facing windows actually brightened the rooms rather than accentuating the gloom. It was an entire suite: a parlor or living room, a bedroom, a bath and an internal water closet.
     Jenes'ahn stalked from room to room, checking the doors and windows before returning to face us and an anxious Haeratha. "How many ways to access this floor?"
     "Two, Ma'am," Haeratha said. "The main stairs and the staff stairs."
     "The other guest wing?"
     "No, Ma'am. There's no access from there. They have their own stairs."
     "Right." The Mediator's tail lashed. "Mikah, you and aesh Hiasamra'this will occupy these rooms. This is acceptable?"
     I looked at Chihirae. "She might like her own room."
     "Apologies, but there are no spare rooms. This won't be too much of an imposition, will it? You are familiar with one another."
     I stiffened and Chihirae hastily broke in, "It's fine. Really. He's quite tolerable. But why the concern? The trouble is behind us, surely?"
     Jenes'ahn didn't even blink. "Of course, ma'am. We're concerned about unknowns, but mostly unwanted petitioners. This location isn't as secure as an estate and there have been some lords who're overly curious and self-entitled. Is this satisfactory?"
     Chihirae stroked the down fur on the backs of her hands, one then the other. "Thank you, constable. I didn't mean..." She huffed a breath I could see in the cold air, then asked, "Is there a chance we'd be able to visit the town? I had heard the Merchant Guild hall here kept a chronicle of the valley's history which I'd especially like to see."
     Jenes'ahn blinked at the presumptuous mouse and I was just waiting for an obnoxious denial. But she surprised me. "That should be possible. We can discuss that when this is all settled."
     Chihirae visibly perked up. "Thank you, constable."
     "Quite. Now, ah Haeratha, if you would show us the rest of the premises while our party moves in."

Staff rumbled to and fro in the halls. Luggage was shifted into the rooms. Rraerch and Chaeitch had other suites on the floor. Even Makepeace had one that was outsized for her, but Rris had their personal space thing. Staff were billeted on the floor above and over in the cheaper side of the inn. Apparently, we'd bought most of the place out.
     I kept out of the way while things were hauled around and unpacked. The rooms were cold, and would be for a while, until the stoves got up to speed. So I took a walk, seeing how the place was laid out and checking out some of the artwork in the halls. Most of that was the local equivalent of the stuff purchased for government buildings: filling a blank spot on the wall. Busy people bustling around and not much more of interest.
     The rooms were still cold, but it didn't seem to bother Chihirae. Standing at the window, sunlight glowing through fluffed fur. "This is okay?" I asked her.
     "Oh, yes," she said. "There's no water, and it doesn't try to move by itself. And I can finally take a walk and have a look around a new town. So much better."
     "They really said yes?" I'd thought they'd procrastinate. Why were they letting her do that?
     "Oh, yes. A couple of guards, of course. But nothing more. I've been wanting to see this place. I've several texts that contradict one another and wanted to see if someone from the school here could settle the sides." She flicked an ear. "It's selfish, I know, but I'd like to get out from behind walls. And Ah Haeratha has assured me there will be someone there this afternoon."
     "That's... is that a good idea?"
     "Why? All that trouble is behind us, a?"
     She didn't know. Not about the bomb, not about the messages flashing down the spine of the hills. None of that. She was so hopeful it was all behind us. And the Mediators hadn't put a stop to her little sojourn. Did they have a reason?
     "You want some company? This meeting with Rohinia could wait."
     A hesitation. I saw her ears flag back, then up again. She didn't look around. "Thank you, Mikah. Really. But... a walk by myself is very appealing. Do you understand that?"
     I tried to. All those lines in human relationships that might signal trouble or doubts couldn't be applied. Not here. The Rris were echoed in their architecture: they weren't gregarious apes; they needed their space away from the others. And after a week crammed into a boat with all those others she might've been going stir-crazy.
     I didn't know. I couldn't feel it like they could. I just nodded. "A."
     A sigh. "Thank you."
     "You have some fun, a?" I said. "See the sights. Are there any?"
     A chitter. "It's an old border town, Mikah. There're books about this place. Some of the things that went on here. I wanted some time when we were here last, but that... didn't work."
     "No, it didn't," I said. "Here... Look, hold on a second..."
     I rummaged in a pocket and found a piece of metal. "Here." I pressed a gold finger into her hands. "For if you see something you like."
     "Mikah..." she started, then closed her hand around the currency. "Thank you."
     "And now I'm going to see if it's warmer downstairs. They had fires going. You have fun, a?"
     She smiled then, like she used to. "A."
     I headed downstairs. That Rris attitude to enclosed personal space extended to the common area down there. The exclusive side of the inn was appointed to a standard that the wealthier guests who stayed there would have expected. There were rugs and artworks. There were molded cornices and fancy wallpaper. There were tables and cushions, tucked away in private nooks behind screens and trellises. One corner and half a wall were a conservatory, with old and expensive glass suspended in wrought-iron latticework. Early afternoon sun was diffracted and diffused into rainbow smears across tables and soaked up by worn granite flagstones. With the heavy iron stoves it was warm enough for the profusion of potted plants that turned the room junglegreen against the drab winter backdrop outside.
     And there was a bar. I found my way there, to find Chaeitch had already found it. It was a secluded room, partitioned by wooden screens. The windows were small and few, the décor darker than the rest of the place. There was a circular fireplace with a tarnished copper hood suspended over it. Tables and cushions around it. There was a counter, but no arrangement of bottles or mirror behind it. Just a Rris barkeeper who looked shocked.
     "Mikah!" A call from a table over by a window. Chaeitch flicked an ear, light flashing through the perforation in the fringe. Rohinia was with him. I sat on the offered cushion. The low table was hexagonal, each of the six legs part of an arch to the next one. It was made from different woods, dark timbers forming the bult with geometric patterns in lighter tones and all lacquered like a mirror.
     "This is acceptable?" Chaeitch asked me, gesturing to the general room. "I've stayed a couple of times and haven't been disappointed."
     "Very nice," I said. "A shame all the towns on the road back won't have inns like this."
     "Make the most of it," he said. "Now. A bar, so drinks."
     There was a little recessed trough set along an edge of the table. In there were little glass things in there, like board-game pieces of glass. A row of different shapes and colors. He picked three clear ones with pink bands, stacked like hats and slightly chipped. "Something that bites. Sariotha, I think," he said as he clicked the stack on the table.
     "How does that work?" I asked.
     Then bartender was there. A bottle and three of the broad flat glasses were set down and he was gone again. Chaeitch flashed me a grin and stowed the pieces again. "Like that. So, how are you settling in?"
     Glass tinkled.
     "Chihirae's happy," I said. "She's looking forward to taking a walk. That isn't going to be a problem?" I looked at Rohinia.
     "What?!" Chaeitch set the bottle down hard and also turned to the Mediator. "After what you've heard?"
     So, he knew. "They won't try anything tonight," Rohinia said.
     "You would bet her life on that?"
     "It's not a gamble," Rohinia rumbled, a low voice that didn't carry. "We're sure. They will be watching and planning and they're unaware that we're know about them. So they will prepare without knowing that we have our own plans already set. Besides, Mikah is their desired target. Wouldn't it better she weren't around him?"
     Wrinkles twitched their way up Chaeitch's muzzle, then smoothed. "And you let her go?" he asked me.
     "What else do I tell her? She... doesn't know. She thinks that's all past. She was happy for a change." I grimaced and shrugged. "And the Mediators might be right: staying away from me could be safest thing for her."
     His head came up a fraction. "That's not something you would want."
     "We can't have everything, a?"
     He stared at me, then hissed. "And she's right about those moments where you use words to mean something they don't. Rot." He took the bottle up again, regarded it, then finished pouring the drinks. I took the offered glass. It was clear, hard alcohol. Freezing cold with a slightly sweet tint and salty aftertaste. I think I'd had it before on the road out. Proof enough to burn, so I sipped.
     Rohinia held his glass up, but didn't drink. "Aesh Hiasamra'this will be fine," he said.
     "Nothing will happen tonight. They will just watch. Tomorrow, ah Ties, we would ask you to do something."
     "What would that be?"
     "Take Mikah somewhere. A tavern or gallery... something he might have an interest in. As you've done before."
     Chaeitch stiffened. "He did ask..."
     "Yes, yes, we're aware of that and it's not relevant. We just need it to look similar: just an unofficial tour of a local sight. You can do that?"
     Chaeitch glanced at me. I nodded. He took a few laps of his drink and flicked ears back.
     "Very well."
     "You know a place?"
     "I think so," he studied his drink, then looked at me and smirked. "I'm not entirely sure Mikah will approve though."

She was late.
     But there'd been no shouting, no distant shots, no worried messengers pounding on the door in the dark. Everything was fine, I'd been assured.
     Still, I was worried.
     There wasn't much to see from the lofty heights of the first floor. There was the yard and the wall and the night mist rolling in and off in the distance some smeared glows from lamps. Not much else.
     Standing there watching and worrying was stupid. So I retied to the lounge and raided their equivalent of the minibar. Then I sat before the stove with the door open, leaning against the low table with a tumbler of something strong on hand, and waited.
     And still worried.
     Eventually the front door opened. Closed again. I looked up as she walked into the room and stopped when she saw me, a small bag dangling from her hand. She cocked her head. "Still awake?"
     "Only just," I said.
     She gave a slight hiss and came over, putting the bag down and then plonking herself down between my legs, leaning back against me and raising her shaggy feet to the fire. They were soaked, matted with ice.
     "You could wear foot coverings," I suggested.
     "So uncomfortable," she said.
     "And wet, cold feet aren't?"
     "It's not so bad," she said.
     "You're not the one who has to clean up a trail of mud from the front door," I returned.
     "Ah, is that what you were waiting for, a? Were you worried about me?"
     "Not so you'd notice," I said and she snorted, then picked up the bottle and investigated the level of liquor.
     "I hope this wasn't full when you started."
     "Not quite. I thought I'd wait and ask how your day went. I guess it was busier than I expected."
     She chittered and shifted her feet, which were starting to steam. "It was. It was what I've been wanting to do since we left. No-one knows me, so I can walk around without being bothered. The museum, that was enjoyable."
     "They answered your questions?" I poured another glass and pushed it across to her. She took it and lapped delicately.
     "They did. They knew the works. One of the authors had never even been in the region and used notes from another for his work. Which explains so much!"
     I grinned. "I'm sure it does."
     "Oh, rot you. It did. And then I visited the Traders Guild hall to see their history. Their records go back to the first houses through here."
     "They were helpful?"
     "A. Most so. Also recommended some merchants with interesting wares and a place with some excellent smoked meats."
     "Ah, the important things."
     A chitter and she bumped her head back against my chest. "I did find something you might like."
     "A?"
     She rummaged in the bag and pulled out a small book-sized, book-shaped object. "Here," she handed it back to me.
     "A book," I noticed. "Nice binding" It was leather with brass trim. Quite thick. I opened it and leafed through the pages. They were all blank. "Not much of a story though."
     "Rot, you willful fool, it's a journal!"
     "Oh."
     "You write in it, details of your days, your thoughts, things like that. Tell your life, your story. I know you can't write properly, but perhaps you can use your words. Someone might be able to read it one day."
     I held the journal, feeling the texture. The leather was very good quality. As was the paper inside. "My story? Who would want to read that?"
     "You are serious?" She chittered aloud then and bumped her head back again. "The things that happen around you? Someone, sometime might be interested. Stranger things have happened, a?"
     "I guess they have," I conceded.
     "There you are then."
     "Huh," I said. I hadn't considered that before. It was... sobering. I weighed the volume in my hand. It was hefty. "Thank you. Thank you for this."
     She stretched out, both legs trembling and toes splayed toward the heat from the fire. "Huhn, you are quite welcome."

"So, you're going to tell me what this place is?" I asked.
     The atrium was a tall and narrow place, three stories tall and roofed with wrought-iron framework and glass. Noon light shone through, stained glass panes casting rainbow light down two floors of smokey air and balconies windows with painted shutters and greenery growing up and around window boxes and planters and trellises. Some of the walls were stone and plaster, but others were tiled, the glossy, brilliantly-glazed fragments arranged in mosaics of patterns and scenes that vacillated depending on how you looked at them from bright landscapes to hedonistic voyeurism. And down at the 1^st floor of the atrium, where we were, the courtyard was another mosaic made from different types and hues of stone cut into flagstones, worn smooth from foot traffic. Planters broke the court into discrete sections, with benches and low tables scattered here and there and surrounded by a pillared cloister.
     It'd obviously been one of those Rris apartment blocks that was so common in their towns and cities. But this one had had the central court roofed over and repurposed. Strata of smoke eddied and curled lazily in the air, originating from the surrounding cloister where stalls and shop frontages opened onto the court. There were a fair few of them, all with their own bright bunting and flags. Some with stoves and grills sizzling away and adding to the atmospheric haze, others with bottles and casks on display, others with racks of other imbibables in a variety of formats. Rris bustled through the atrium, lit from the skylights above.
     "A market, of sorts," Chaeitch said, adding his bit to the air pollution as he puffed his pipe. Back behind us, the big doors in the entry hall we'd entered through were wide open, but was that enough to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning? There didn't seem to be anyone keeling over, so there must've been adequate ventilation.
     I turned back to him. "Of sorts?"
     "A. Most would be in a common square and pay a fee to the town hall. This is a private building. They pay the owner who have made the changes here. Not too many places like it."
     So, a sort of proto-mall? A souk? The stalls looked more established, less weatherbeaten than most of the outdoor places I'd seen. "It would be more expensive than a market, a?"
     "Certainly. But, they can open all hours and weather. And, of course, they're more expensive. Exclusive products. The first into Land-of-Water from Bluebetter's ports. Southern products, grain, alcohol, foods, jewelry, metals and crafted goods. I get my smoke weed from a supplier here." He waggled his pipe. "Expensive, but good."
     We were getting looks. A Rris in expensive clothes, and me. Of course we got looks.
     "What's upstairs?"
     "I believe there's a few company offices, a grooming hall, a seasonal, accountants and apartments."
     I blinked. "A... season-al?"
     "A. A seasonal. You know... An establishment where one can go out of season. If you have the inclination. And the money."
     "Is that a sex thing?"
     He chittered. "Most certainly a sex thing. You've never heard of them?"
     "For some reason it's never come up." But I had to remember an escort the palace had tried to ply me with a long time ago. "You didn't bring me here to visit a brothel did you?"
     "Rot, no," he said. "Well, unless you want to. You don't, do you?"
     "Um, no."
     "Well, then. That's sorted. I wanted to visit my supplier and thought you might be interested in the other specialists here. And it's a good place for midmeal."
     The stalls and food vendors had counters in front of their establishments where patrons could eat. Why so many of them? I guess because Rris apartments in the towns didn't have kitchens as I knew them. No refrigerators. No water on-tap. No ovens that don't rely on fire. They couldn't store food, or even prepare it conveniently. Far easier to go down to the local eatery or pub or whatever was nearby, and there were plenty of those willing to supply the demand so they were cheap and cheerful. The courtyard had its share of places selling baked goods and meat pies, bowls, strips, kebabs, steaks, chunks, slabs, sausages, stews, soups, goulashes, wraps, rolls, stir-frys, dumplings, hashes, smokers, grills, and plenty of things I couldn't put a name to.
     And the other establishments in there tended towards more material goods. The shops and stalls were presenting trinkets and knives and lamps and other manufactured goods. One was displaying rugs, some of which I thought resembled ones that'd been gifted to me by embassies. Expensive. There was clothing of various kinds, from ponchos to waistcoats and roadcoats. Bolts of cloth in vibrant colors. More than a few of the shops had glass in the windows, protecting more valuable items of gold and precious metals. Paintings were on display. Statues and figurines, ornaments and decorations in of all sorts of materials. Herbs and spices on racks and hung from ceilings. Grooming kits, again rendered in all manner of quality and materials.
     Rris were everywhere, walking the courtyard and the cloister around it. Market-goers about their business. Or, I hoped they were. Rohinia had wanted this to look like one of those times when I ignored their orders and wandered out unsupervised. A security lapse. Something that observers would notice. And if they had, then some of those might not be innocent bystanders. Which was the entire idea.
     I was bait. Drawing them away from Chihirae. And we attracted onlookers like a magnet attracts iron filings. Curious Rris followed us in a sort of moving cordon, keeping their distance but enjoying having something to watch while eating their mid-meals. There would be undercover Mediators present, disguised as farmers and townspeople and merchants. Which ones? I Couldn't tell. I took it on faith that they'd be there. So, I followed Chaeitch from shop to shop, trying to keep an eye out for assassins without looking like I was watching for assassins.
     That was on top of the usual stuff. Proprietors physically bristled at the sight of me. Even with Chaeitch strolling at my side they tended to act like he was trying to bring a grizzly into their establishments. He made the usual placating gestures. They made the usual disbelieving noise, at least until money appeared. We browsed our way around the bazaar, from shop to shop. There was a place that displayed serried ranks of ornate knives and blades of all shapes, sizes, and purpose; a jeweler surrounded by dangling examples of gold and silver finery; a dealer in decorative lamps; a small gallery of what we were assured were works by very promising artists. And, of course, Chaeitch's weed supplier.
     He stopped at a dimly-lit shop without glass in the front window. Instead it was hung with racks of dried leaves and herbs. There was hemp, a bewildering number of different varieties of the stuff along with other plant material offered as dried leaves and cut sticks and powders and tinctures. The sweetish smell of the hemp was predominant and thick enough to cut with a knife. They didn't breed the stuff for the THC content — it didn't affect them in the same way — but the cut and dried varietals Chaeitch preferred were strong enough that you could almost taste it.
     I waited outside while he went in to sniff and sort through his favorite herbs.
     So I actually saw the ears on surrounding Rris twitch like wind through tall grass. Then saw heads everywhere turn towards the bazaar entrance. And then I heard the low thuds of explosions. Several of them. Not close, but not too far.
     There was one place they could be. But why would they be there? How could they know this was...
     Comprehension grabbed my heart with an icy hand and squeezed. I started moving. The crowd didn't. "MOVE!" I bellowed and then they did, scrambling out of my way as I picked up speed, dodging Rris and stalls and furnishings. I heard someone behind me shout but ignored it, focusing on the light at the end of the entry way and just fucking getting there!
     Another distant explosion as I pounded out onto the street, the sound bouncing from the rooftops and buildings. But I was certain it'd come from that direction, from the inn a couple of blocks away. I half-staggered half-skidded to a stop on the icy cobbles. Left or right? Which way was faster?
     "Hold!" a Rris voice yelled and a Rris was grabbing at my arm, digging claws into my coat and drawing me up. I started to swing and he dodged back. "Rot, Mikah! Hold! Don't do this!"
     It took me a second, but I recognized Rohinia. In a ragged cloak over a dirty leather cuirass and kilt, but still carrying a pistol in one hand. His ears were flat. "You don't..."
     "You lying fuck!" I screamed back. "It was never me, was it! It was her all the time!"
     "Wait! You can't..."
     I didn't wait around to hear what I couldn't do. I shoved him away. The popping sounds of gunfire were sounding over the rooftops, from the other side of that block. I started for the closer corner and halfway there saw a gateway, a warehouse, the doors open. Through them I could see it was a straight through to the courtyard in the middle of the block.
     "Mikah!" a voice yowled behind me.
     The warehouse was dim, the only light coming from the open doors at either end. Tall racks of shelves stacked almost to the high ceiling with sacks which Rris workers had been hauling to carts. They were staring at the other doors where the sounds of gunfire were louder. Not the poppoppop of automatic weapons, but the mushier and erratic booms of black-powder weapons. As I charged through, a worker yowled and dropped a sack they'd been loading, setting white powder spilling. Others looked around and more cries went up, the workers falling back as I belted past. Out the other door. Into a small yard with another open gate. Trying to draw my gun as I ran through that and into the central court.
     As other Rris spilled through an entrance on the far side of the courtyard. Two, then five, then more. A pair stopped to turn and fire pistols behind them into the tunnel they'd entered through, filling the space with grey smoke and an echoing retort. Other raced into the court. Some saw me. I saw a red coat.
     "Fuck!"
     Shouts. Raised weapons. I flailed to a stop and fired a couple of wild shots that went god-knows-where. They scattered, took cover. I backpedaled into cover as a barrage of shots came back. Slugs of metal whirled past, chips of stone flew from walls and I almost ran into Rohinia. "What have you done!" he snarled.
     "Me?!" I spat as I hugged the solid stone. "You bumbling bollards fucking set me up!"
     He looked around the corner, ears went back and he raised his own pistol. A flare of gunpowder and sparks and then it blasted a gout of flame and smoke and noise. "Run!" he snarled back at me.
     Best idea I'd heard all day. I did so. He was walking backwards, another pistol out and aimed at the gate. I stopped, grabbed one of the big doors. "Come on!" I yelled, then had another idea.
     There was a tool like a billhook: a sharp hook on a long pole. I grabbed that as Rohinia fired his shot from his other pistol. There was a yell, but I didn't look around. I raked the hook along high-up sacks of flour. The metal dug in to rough-spun fabric, stuck. I yanked hard. The bag tore. Flour poured our in a spreading cloud.
     "What the rot are you doing?!" Rohinia snarled.
     "Get out of here!" I snapped back, savaging another sack and another as I moved back along the rows. Flour was billowing everywhere, turning into an opaque white cloud that spread across the warehouse.
     "That won't stop them!" he spat from somewhere in the cloud.
     "Just go!" I spat back. Now my mouth tasted like an arts-and-crafts project as I reached the last of the shelves by the doors. A final stab and yank set one of the high stacks tumbling, exploding into powder and just added to the chaos. I threw the hook down and bolted for the light. There were shouts behind me. In front of me the ghost of Rohinia was reloading his pistol. Smooth, mechanical motions as he shoved a ramrod into the bore and tamped it down while retreating.
     I grabbed his arm this time. "Fucking run!" I screamed, trying to yank him into motion. We managed perhaps ten meters before he stopped. I also turned to urge him on. He fired. Back at the warehouse door a figure had stopped at the peripheries of the swirling cloud of dust and chaff in the warehouse. I saw the flash of red through the white dust, then the levelled flintlock. At that range it was accurate enough...
     A flash in the pan.
     A larger flash of fire enveloping the Rris, buffeting him like a balloon. Then a blast of heat and light rolling out the door.
     Tiles on the roof lifting into the air like startled crows.
     Weatherboards popped from their frames as though punched from behind.
     A belch of fire and heat roiled out across the street and hit like a hot backhand that went right through your body and out the other side with a thump that was like someone pounding on the universe like a drum. I threw up an arm, recoiling, ended up sitting on my ass in on the icy, grubby street.
     Choking smoke fell like a fog, smothering everything. The world was filled with a ringing silence. Or maybe that was just my head.
     A short, sharp shower of roofing tiles followed, smashing to flinders through the smoke and dust surrounding the remains of the warehouse.
     I hauled myself to my feet, taking inventory along the way. My ears were ringing. Everything smelled like hot dust and smoke and burnt toast. I ached, but everything seemed to be there, including my pistol. I flexed my fingers on the grip, weighing it, then started limping towards the broken remains of the warehouse visible through the smoke. The front still stood: what was left of the doorway and adjacent walls. Beyond that was a broken tooth in the row of buildings. Smoke and dust billowed out the doors and what was left of the roof. I kept the pistol pointed that way in case anything moved.
     Debris littered the street: fragments of wood, smashed tiles, torn sacking, clumps of burnt flour, nails and bits of metal. A cart wheel was half-embedded in a wall on the opposite side of the street. A smoking lump wearing tattered and patched red cloth was laying sprawled face down. It groaned when I kicked it.
     Rris were responding. There was shouting in the dust. Yowling alien screams started up. Figures running into the swirling white. Rohinia staggered up. A patchy white monstrosity panting hard, but his pistol was steady. Chaeitch was a few steps behind him, flanked by Rris wearing civilian clothing, but moving with the attitudes of Mediators. A few gunshots popped from off in the murk, then more shouts.
     "What have you done?" Rohinia rasped.
     "Your job," I said and kicked the singed and semi-conscious bandit. He was still breathing. "And maybe this time you can get some actual answers."

"You lied to me!" I growled, almost as viciously as a Rris. "You fucking lied to me. You used her!"
     Hurrying along beside me, Chaeitch looked uncomfortable. On his other side Rohinia looked annoyed and outlandish, still caked in flour and smoke.
     "We said no such thing," he growled back.
     "You..."
     "You assumed! You created your own little scenario for what you thought was happening. It wasn't."
     "That's bullshit! You said I would lead them away."
     "No! We said you would do what you've done before, which was sneak away."
     "As bait!"
     "Of course not. You're too valuable. They'd know that. And of course they would assume we would be out looking for you which would leave the inn relatively unguarded."
     "What?!" I almost stumbled trying to figure that out. "Just... what?! Who would think like that?"
     "It makes complete sense. Isn't that correct, ah Ties?"
     Chaeitch fell back a step. "Constable, I'm not getting drawn into that."
     "But you did use her as bait!"
     "She was never in any danger," he huffed. "We ensured the inn was very well protected. That they chose to flee in precisely the direction you were coming from was remarkably bad luck. And decision on your part."
     Chaeitch kept his mouth shut.
     "Some trap," I growled. "So good they just waltzed out of it." I'd be damned if they'd lay that on me.
     "Something went wrong," Rohinia said. "And you... did you know that would happen? An entire building, rot you."
     "I was more afraid that it wouldn't," I said and we rounded the final corner to see the inn.
     "Rot," Chaeitch said.
     "Oh, shit," I said.
     Smoke was still trickling up into a clear blue sky. The court wall was breached in a couple of places, blasted apart in jumbles of fallen bricks. Windows were shattered, every visible pane smashed or cracked. Mediators were everywhere, stationed at all entrances. There were town guards there as well, milling around, but not interfering with the Guild. Rohinia answered a sentry's challenge with a short, sharp response. The Mediator stepped back, looking askance at the constable covered in ashy flour and snow, but let us pass.
     We took the most direct route, picking our way through one of the gaps in the wall. There was more damage to the main building: chipped and fragmented stonework, burn marks, a toppled chimney. The beautiful conservatory was a wreck of twisted framing and broken glass. Walls were pocked from bullet and other debris. What had they hit the place with? Grenades?
     There were Rris inside amidst the lingering smoke and stink of gunpowder. Alive and otherwise. Land-of-Water guards and Mediators were still tending to injured. Others were hauling bodies out the door. Distraught staff were milling around, some trying to sweep up debris. The manager was in the foyer, having words with Jenes'ahn. He seemed to be having a breakdown of some kind. Rraerch was coming downstairs. She glanced at us and did a doubletake. "Mikah! What the..."
     "She's okay?" I interrupted. "Where is she?"
     Rraerch's eyes flicked past me, to Chaeitch and Rohinia. "She's unhurt, if that's what you're asking. Upstairs. They didn't get close. Mikah... !"
     I was past her, pounding up the stairs. There were Mediator guards in the hall upstairs. They had those multi-barrel repeating shotguns and good trigger discipline, so I wasn't blasted when I charged into the corridor. And they didn't try to stop me when I shoved past and into our rooms.
     Windows were cracked, some of the panes smashed to flinders on the floor. And plaster from a cornice had fallen, but otherwise I couldn't see any obvious damage. Or Chihirae. I yelled her name as I ran in, through the entry vestibule to the sitting room.
     "Rot!" came a snarl from the bedroom and Chihirae stalked out. Literally bristling. The snarl on her muzzle bared all her teeth, right to the back ones. "You..." she started and then stopped cold. Stared. Looked me down. Then up. Her muzzle smoothed and tail drooped. "What... what happened to you?"
     "I'm fine. What happened here? Are you okay?"
     "You're..." she trailed off, still staring. Then she huffed and drew herself up again, looking like a schoolteacher reprimanding her charges. "What happened is explosions and guns and windows breaking and there were people dying. Mikah! That constable just got me upstairs after the conservatory was smashed. They came in. The Mediators met them. There was so much noise and I hid up here until the constable said it was over.
     "Mikah! You said it was over. Everyone did. Then... this! I... I can't live like this, Mikah!"
     "I know," I said and then sagged to the floor, sitting on the rug, elbows on knees and head in my hands. Unutterably weary. I ached — inside and out. "Rot, Chi. I know."
     A pause. Then quietly she asked, "What happened? You knew about this?"
     I raked hands back through my hair. The flour and sweat was a horrible, sticky mess. "I thought I was bait. I thought they would come after me today. But the Guild... they were expecting them to strike here. They said it makes sense, but it doesn't! I don't know... Am I that stupid?!"
     "Sometimes," she said and then crouched down before me. "Sometimes, absolutely. Other times, most certainly not. Perhaps it's like your reading, a? Just seeing things... differently?"
     And it's going to get you killed, I didn't say.
     She was silent for a while, just staring at me. She was frightened, I could see that. Could she see that in me as well?
     "What happened to you? Is that... flour?"
     "Mostly. We ran into those bandits going the other way. I made a bit of a mess."
     "Did they finally get them?" she asked.
     "A," I nodded.
     "The same one as... as before?"
     "I think so."
     She sighed, her breath visible. With the windows broken it'd got cold in there. "So now they can get their answers?"
     "Rohinia said they were sure they would," I said.
     "Huhn," she said. "And what do you think?"
     She was staring at me as I thought they would get whatever red-coat knew, which might not be much; which might not be the ones actually behind this; which meant there might be others, perhaps better at their job; which meant that this might not be over.
     I didn't say any of that, but she blinked once, twice, then said, "I see."
     Then she stood and walked out.

I spent most of the afternoon confined to quarters, ostensibly for my own protection. I spent it pacing, annoying anyone I could, trying to find out what was going on. After a few hours Rris workmen turned up to clean some of the mess and replace the lights in the windows. Chaeitch also showed with an invitation to get cleaned up in the inn's baths. That was downstairs in a suite of rooms behind the kitchens, sharing a wall with the big stoves there. It was warm in there, tiled in verdant greens shading up to whites and blues. And there were baths there, along with Rohinia and an entirely unnecessary staff insisting on doing their jobs.
     I'd been through this before. They were a hairy people and their fur needed care. So that was a profession, and grooming parlors were as common as barber shops were back home. It was just that I didn't really fit in with their usual clientele. They stared. They tried to hide it, but I felt it as I stripped off and climbed into a steaming tub.
     So it wasn't a relaxing soak to clean a congealing mess of flour and soot, but rather a well-planned, multi-pronged assault by a team of aggressive Rris attendants equipped with scrubbing brushes and hot water and soap that was more lye than anything else. Separate teams worked on Chaeitch and Rohinia. And while they worked, Chaeitch kept his pipe dry and filled me in on what'd happened back at the inn.
     The attackers had used satchel charges, or something like them, to blow the walls in three places. Two were distractions while the main force swarmed in and breached the conservatory. They hadn't been expecting just about everyone in the vicinity to be undercover Guild, nor the small garrison upstairs with their repeaters. After the initial surprise and assault they were met with withering fire and concerted resistance and fell back, then fled.
     I knew what happened then.
     We'd come off quite lightly. The Guild had been expecting it; had been prepared. The raiders had gotten the worst of the exchange, and now most of them were dead or captured. Including the one we thought was a leader. Whether or not they could get anything out of him, or if he even knew anything, that was another story. Even I understood that anyone commissioning a hit like that would want to distance themselves as much as possible. So the hired help probably didn't know who they were really working for.
     Still, that was a major thorn out of our feet.
     The attendants did their job and helped me wash. Helped me dry off. Tended to my hair and beard. All the usual service.
     When I returned to my rooms the windows had been mended. The stove was stoked and throwing off heat and all traces of dust and debris were gone. Scrubbed as clean as I was.
     But there was no-one else there. And my door was locked from the outside.
     Evening came and went. Guards delivered food, but couldn't or wouldn't give me any further information. I waited.
     Midnight came and went. There were still voices somewhere outside, downstairs, growling and hissing a language that still hurt my throat. Finally I went to bed.
     I didn't sleep well. There were dreams of white and cold. I woke to cold and dark and the bed moving as someone climbed in. A warm body slid under the comforter, laid next to me.
     "Chi?" I ventured.
     "A," came the reply. That was all. The warmth rolled over, her back to me.
     I waited, but there was nothing else. And that said it all, really.

We went home.
     That's so easy to say.
     Home. Not my home, but a home. The place where I had a house and where I felt like a person with a little control. It might've just been illusionary, but most feelings are.
     And it was easy to say we went there. A day of rest, recuperation, and repair, and then we were off. A convoy of carriages and wagons again. This time with more guards pulled from the local garrison, more Mediators, more arms and armor. More mouths to feed, more provisions. The whole extended procession set out in the early hours, taking the northern road away from Summer Breaks, back on the trail toward Shattered Water.
     I was braced for something to happen: another attack, some act of sabotage from within our ranks, an assassination attempt. Something. But the days went by and there was nothing but the routine of the road and the ice-ridden river leading through that mountainous wilderness of bare trees and snow.
     There were the towns and villages along the route. They were small settlements, usually set a day's travel apart. I'd seen the like before: a main street with an inn or coaching house, a smithy, a few stores, houses and farms. The people living there were farmers and traders and while they were surprised to see a large convoy stop off in their town, they were glad of the business. We could resupply and money was spent. Locals would try to sell knick-knacks and trinkets: small knives, cutlery, mugs or pots, carvings, rugs or blankets, cooked goods. Whatever they thought troops on the move might be willing to pay for. Come morning and we'd move on again.
     Rinse and repeat. Retracing our path through the Rippled Lands, following the Ashansi Trail. The little settlement where Makepeace and myself had been pulled from the water we passed on the far side of the river. We spent a couple of nights at Thieves Always Return as guests of the local lord. The inn at Three Birds Fall... we didn't go there.
     And, gradually, people started to relax. Rraerch occasionally took her eyes off me to do something else. Makepeace increasingly sat with me in the carriage, asking questions the Mediators almost automatically objected to. Chaeitch lolled on a baggage wagon whenever there was some sun, dozing in temperatures that were barely above freezing.
     And Chihirae...
     Was distant. She spoke when spoken to. She was polite and gracious. She slept by my side in the freezing nights, providing warmth and companionship. But it felt... forced. Sometimes there were raised voices from another carriage or in an inn in a town somewhere, but when I turned the corner there was only her and a departing Mediator and nothing wrong at all. Really.
     I'd put two and two together a long time ago. And no matter how often I recalculated, it still equaled four. There was a way out, but it was something I really didn't want to do.
     When we reached the town of Long Way, I understood that I had to do it.

A few days until Shattered Water. Spirits were high. The main hall in the inn was smokey and noisy as soldiers made their own entertainment, throwing coins to a minstrel who took requests. Between drunken Rris carousing and people shouting to make themselves heard, it was like a fire in a cattery.
     I begged off early, retreating while the getting was good. The room they'd put me in was upstairs, two floors up. The guards on duty out front hurriedly straightened up from where they'd been slouched against the walls as I passed. Inside was chilly. The chimney running up one corner was warm from fires below, but the room was still chilly. No matter.
     Chaeitch took a while. Eventually there was a flash of lamplight from the hall as he opened the door to his own room next door, muttering something as he entered. When he closed it the light was gone and there was only the glow from the window. Then he turned and saw me and froze on the spot.
     For a moment. His eyes shone molten as he stared at me sitting on the cushion by the window, near the chimney where there was some warmth. Then he huffed a breath visible in the cold light and came over to sit himself. He looked up at the window.
     "You didn't come that way, did you?"
     I shrugged. It'd been scary as hell swinging from joists under the eaves. "I really need to talk with you. Quietly."
     "I gathered."
     "They're making her, aren't they," I said quietly. "They're forcing her to stay." There was quite a long pause before he said, "A."
     "Threats?"
     "A."
     "How bad?"
     He spread hands. "They told her what would happen if she left. If they withdrew protection. How long she might last."
     "Are they right?"
     A shrug of the hands. "I think... they have a point."
     I sighed. "Can you help."
     "I don't know what I can do."
     "I... might have an idea."
     "And that would be?"
     I told him. He listened. His ears went back. He fumbled for his pipe and then must've realized he didn't have a light. He put it down. "You would do that?"
     "I would. Would it work?"
     "It... I don't know. It might just throw her to the wolves."
     "And if I don't she has to exist like this. It's not... it's not what a... a..." I struggled for a word. "A relation between two should be. The Guild has the wrong idea about my... needs."
     "Your obsession?"
     "They call it that. It's wrong. In too many ways. And if she stays, then one day one of these attempts will get lucky. Broken Sun again. I can't live with that. That's why I need your help. She needs your help. Can you? Will you?"
     Another pause, and then a deep, resigned sigh. "What do you need me to do?"

The majestic city of Shattered Water.
     Well, it was by local standards. To me it was a sprawling alien impossibility. A city by the lake, but not a human city. Never that.
     It was also the closest thing to home I had. So the mixed emotions I experienced as we crawled into the outskirts of the old city under a bruised evening sky were interesting to rummage through. We accreted more guards as we went. Fresh troops from outlaying barracks and posts conscripted to escort the convoy.
     The tail-end of winter still gripped that part of the world. Most of the streets were unfamiliar to me, but there were landmarks I recognized: the lake hadn't gone anywhere, the half-eaten city walls with their cardinal gatehouses were still there, the city squares with the graphically martial statues, the ruins of an old keep where I'd watched another sunset, the river with its bridges.
     And then there were roads I was familiar with. The avenues and smaller streets set between high hedges. A green gate in a stone wall, the ivy bare under winter snow. Then a familiar gateway. A curving driveway up a low hill. A house that might've been constructed in a Queen Anne style if you squinted and didn't look too closely.
     And thank all that might have been godly that we weren't going straight to the palace or the fucking Guild hall. Another day in the carriage and I'd have started chewing on the upholstery. And most of the others must've felt the same.
     I stepped out of the carriage, down onto snow over the gravel of the drive. As I walked toward the house the front door opened and a prim figure stepped onto the porch.
     "Good evening, sir," Tich bowed graciously. "Welcome home. I trust your journey went well?"
     Sometimes, you gotta laugh.

They gave me a day before I was called to the palace for a debriefing. Rraerch and Chaeitch weren't so fortunate. They were summoned the day after we returned, to give their reports and evaluation of how our journey had gone.
     A success? I suppose if you ticked off the objectives you could call it that. But there were the other aspects: how many people had died? How many promises broken? What about a guarantee of passage and safety so violated that a declaration of war would have been almost a matter of course? What about an unmistakable message from powerful and hidden people that they weren't going to accept any change to the status quo, that kings and queens weren't immune to their displeasure?
     And there was a further message from their opposite numbers that they were very interested in what the future might offer.
     I didn't know how they'd answer that. I had a day to think it over. At least it was indescribably good to be able to sleep in a comfortable, warm, vermin-free bed and know that it would be there the next night.
     Even if Chihirae shut herself away with her own problems.
     So I spent the day resting, unpacking, stowing some of the gifts I'd been given. Stewing in anticipation of what was to happen. The usual.
     The Palace extended an invitation the following morning. A messenger turned up along with a carriage and armed escort. One of those invitations you can't refuse.
     The ride was familiar. Along familiar streets through the city, across bridges, up boulevards to the huge estate by the lake. The grounds were white and cold and full of memories. As was the palace itself: I'd spent enough time there.
     Kh'hitch was at his post. When I entered he looked up from the thick tome he was taking notes from, then very deliberately closed it and snapped a hasp shut with a click. "Ah Rihey. Still making waves, a?"
     "Good morning, Kh'hitch. You know, that vacation really sucked. Is there somewhere I can register a complaint?"
     A sigh. "His lordship will be with you shortly."
     Hurry up and wait.
     When I was shown into the Rris King's pale study I found he was already in a meeting. Rohinia was sitting on one of the cushions in front of the King's desk. He looked tired.
     "Mikah," Hirht said to me. "Sit." That wasn't an invitation.
     I settled myself on one of the other two cushions. I had a feeling it was going to be a long day. Hirht stared at me. "Or is it the Beast of Three Birds Fall now?"
     I sighed. "They didn't get my best side."
     He considered that. "I think that wasn't the worst light you could have been portrayed in."
     "Don't tell me it's here?"
     "I read a copy. But that whole play would seem to sum up your little journey, a?"
     "I'm not sure I have the words to describe it," I said. "A macabre fiasco might work: it would be funny if it weren't so terrible."
     "Not so bad," he said.
     I looked from him to Rohinia who was overflowing with all the gushing emotion of a headstone. Back again. "People died. Sir. A lot of people died. I wouldn't want to see your idea of 'slightly bad'."
     "Apart from that aspect, I mean. Aesh Smither's approaches seem to have been received favorably. Her reports said that most of your goals were achieved and Bluebetter has tentatively signed on the proposals."
     I nodded. "And you managed to coax your problems out of their lairs?"
     His expression didn't flicker. "You noticed that."
     "Difficult not to when you're the bait."
     He huffed once and stared at me for a while. Finally he said, "You were never supposed to be placed in such a position. Constable, the Guild did give assurances — many assurances that Mikah would be protected."
     "And given what was understood at the time, he was. The situation changed. Our solution involved minimal risk at the time to prevent greater risk later on."
     "The Guild defends its decision?"
     "It does. A plot to undermine a Guild declaration was uncovered. We have names and places to investigate and our [principal] is still alive. That is considered a success."
     Hirht tipped his hand in acknowledgement. "I see. Mikah, would you consider this endeavor a success?"
     I had to think for a bit. "Sir, we did what was requested. Tasks were accomplished, boxes were ticked. But... people died. A lot of people. If we have to do this for all the nations..." I waved a shrug, then just let my hand drop and said simply, "I'm not going to survive that."
     Inhuman eyes studied me. Perhaps trying to read something I wasn't capable of saying. "This was the only way."
     "Ah. You've tried nothing and you're all out of ideas?"
     Another pause. "There may be other options, but we didn't have the time. We had to make a show of willingness. That was it. If you have a better solution, I would like to hear it."
     "Give me a few days," I said.
     "I look forward to hearing about it," he said. "Now, I would like to hear your account of what happened."
     "You've heard from Rraerch, of course. And the Guild hasn't told you?"
     "Their versions," he said. "And of course I value that, but I would like to hear it from you."
     He must've had a bell pullcord or something. Kh'hitch entered as if he'd been waiting, a scribe's kit in hand. He settled himself, surprisingly graceful for a person who could do with loosing another person, and set the board across his lap, papers and pen and ink ready.
     "How much do you want to hear?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
     "All of it," Hirht said and gestured to me. "Whenever you're ready, Mikah."

The sun was set long before I got back home from the palace. The ride had been through darkness, interrupted by the occasional skerrick of streetlighting, then darkness again. Even with the armed escort I kept half-expecting gunfire, explosions, mayhem of some flavor, but it was quiet. Achingly so. Rohinia, sitting kitty-corner and in a brown study of his own, wasn't much for conversation.
     So the ride was dark and boring and cold, the warm lights in the windows at the end a welcome sight.
     Tich was there to welcome us. Politely ducking her head as we entered. "Sir. Constable. Welcome back."
     "Thank you, Tich," I said. "Good to be home. Is there any food left?"
     "Yes, sir. Cook has something prepared. It will be ready momentarily."
     "Thank you."
     "And sir? Aesh Sitaena stopped by today..."
     "Who?"
     She blinked at me. "Your guest, sir. The stray and her child you pulled from the cracks. Ea'rest aesh Sitaena."
     "Ah. Yes. Sorry. That's been... not a vital concern for a while."
     "Yes, sir. I apologize, sir. She had heard you had returned and requested a meeting."
     And I'd left instructions to... Oh. Shit. "How is she doing?" I asked, with some trepidation. "I did say to assist her in any way?"
     "Yes, sir. She came forward with a proposal — a venture and an amount."
     "How expensive did it get?"
     "I believe it was... acceptable. She requested you visit her when you have an available moment."
     "Okay. She is in the city?"
     "I believe so, sir. She has an address near the middle bridge."
     That wasn't a cheap district. Not the wealthiest either, but near both the merchant and river industrial districts. "What's she done?"
     "I'm afraid I don't know the details, sir," she said. "I can endeavor to find out."
     "Please do that. And let her know I will try and visit when my schedule allows. And is Chihirae in?"
     "Yes, sir," Tich said. "Her ladyship took her meal not long ago. I believe she is in her rooms. I can..."
     "Thank you, Tich," I interrupted. "Thanks, but... leave her be, please. I'll just wash and change and eat. A?"
     "Yes, sir," she said and went to make it all happen.
     And I did my stuff: Washed away the sweat and nervousness from the heat of being grilled by a Rris king. Had an extremely good meal by myself in the dining room. Spent some time in the study shuffling papers around, making my own notes of the day. I could read those, although I wasn't entirely certain others couldn't.
     And later I sat on the edge of the bed, the single oil lamp flickering. I laid head in hands and raked fingers through overgrown hair. Tired. God. A quiet moment when an alien world seemed a long way off.
     And the door latch clicked. I turned my head to see Chihirae quietly enter, carefully close the door behind herself and turn.
     "Hi," I said.
     She just silently approached and sat down beside me.
     She didn't say anything.
     I sighed. Straightened. "They sent you, didn't they."
     Her tongue flashed around her mouth. Once. Then she said, "A."
     "You can say no, you know."
     "You know... it's not that simple."
     We sat quietly for a while. Then she nudged a little closer. Leaned against me and her fingertips traced down the inside of my arm. "Always feels so strange," she said. "No fur. Smooth. Strange muscles."
     "Still strange?"
     "Sometimes, I'm reminded," she said and bumped her head against my shoulder. "Sometimes."
     "Them again," I noted. She was wearing a simple tabard-like thing. I reached up under it, automatically scratching her back. "You don't have to be here. We don't have to do anything."
     A low growl, then she said. "Mikah, you don't know... Just... don't. It's easier this way."
     "You mean just do what they say? Do you really want that?"
     "Do you know what the alternatives are?"
     That hit home. I pretty much did. And the unwritten agreement I had with the Guild meant that as long as I played ball, so would they. But... they seemed to be changing the rules of the game as they went along. And what we were playing with wasn't a ball, it was Chihirae's life.
     "You don't want me to be here?" she asked hesitantly. "I should go?"
     And I could've sent her away. But, I couldn't. They'd sent her, they were throwing her at me like you might give a child a candy to take their mind off a skinned knee. If I sent her away then they'd... I didn't know what they'd do.
     "No," I said to her. "I want you to stay. Really. Please."
     And that was the utter truth. And I didn't turn her away. And for a time we did what we thought made each other happy. And I loved her for that, for everything.

Another couple of days of meetings at the palace, at the Guild hall. There were questions about the Riders in Red. Questions about the trade talks: how things had seemed, what questions they'd asked, what had been promised. I don't know why they were asking me about that — I was as a reliable judge of Rris manners and character as I was a neurosurgeon. For me to tell if a Rris were manipulating or even just lying to my face was exceedingly difficult. That's why Rraerch had been there.
     There were questions about the incidents on the way there. There were questions about Three Birds Fall. About how that incident had become enshrined in a play that seemed to be getting around at amazing speed. There were also requests that'd come up along the trail: requests for funding to help rebuild a bridge, queries from a town about something they'd pulled out of the river, questions from certain Lords along the trail, a costing for repairs to a ferry.
     "And a granary was utterly destroyed," Kh'hitch had said, itemized list unrolling in front of him. He looked right at me. "You do realize those are valuable?"
     That was a highlight. Otherwise those conferences were dull and methodical. The ones with the Guild having more of an air of interrogation about them. At least they weren't concerned about property damage.
     And, finally, there was the meeting with Rraerch and Chaeitch. They'd had their own work to do, but I received word that my presence was required. It wasn't... unexpected.
     The Smither Works building was still there; was still a sprawling compound on the edge of the industrial quarter, devouring neighboring buildings as it spread. Work had progressed on another wing, but there was still way to go before it was usable. Same with the shed for housing the compressors for the new compressed-air system. For the most part the stewards had kept daily work ticking over while the bosses were away.
     The carriages stopped outside the brick buildings of the main offices and my escort and I headed in and upstairs, stopping traffic as we went. Chaeitch was in his office and this time his secretary didn't try to announce me. I strolled in, Jenes'ahn following as my shadow for the day.
     "Mikah," Chaeitch looked up from his paperwork and greeted me. "Good timing. Enter, please. Finished that portrait yet?"
     I stopped and blinked, dredging up an old memory, then sighed. "That? God, that feels like a lifetime ago."
     "And more than a few gray hairs," he said, gingerly twitching a perforated ear. Then sat up, stretched his arms and pushed paperwork aside. "And I understand his Lordship has spoken with you about... all that."
     "With me. Or at me," I shrugged. "I'm wondering if they intend to bill me for damages. Apparently bridges are expensive."
     A snort. "I believe that's quite low on his lordship's priorities. He is more interested in Bluebetter's response to this whole debacle. Please, sit."
     I did so. He found a couple of glasses and a bottle. Poured. "They've agreed to almost all the terms," he said. "Everything signed and notarized. He was impressed."
     "Which was what you wanted," I said. "Wasn't it?"
     "But not entirely expected," he said and pushed a glass my way. He knew what I found acceptable. "It was more likely they would pick and choose."
     "It's a problem?"
     "Not exactly." He lapped at his drink, his eyes flicking back to the Mediator standing behind me. "Just more [tracks in the bush] than we'd expected. I mean, more things to accomplish at the same time. We'd thought events would be more spread out."
     The drink was subtle and stingingly cold. "You don't think they agreed just to see what they could learn? Drop out at the last instant?"
     "There are penalty clauses for such," he said. "The Guild enforces. No, it just means we will have a great deal to do. I'm still working through the lists of who to delegate what to. What would be your thoughts?"
     I considered. "That's really not my field, but to start with: the surveying will take... a long time. And there's the resources required: mining, steel production and other materials like coal and copper and tin and lead. There will be more demand there, so there will have to be improvements throughout the supply line. There's engines and machines. Those will have to be properly planned, so they're not obsolete before they're finished."
     He tapped a paper on his desk. "And the storage and transportation of materials. The accommodation and support of personnel. And it will require a great deal of those."
     I twirled my glass, watching the drink swirl. "There are ways to make things easier. Machines and techniques. They may take a bit of time to organize, but they can reduce labor and speed things up once they're running."
     "That would be immensely useful," he said. "That air system for example?"
     "Umm. Perhaps. Drills, hammers, engines... a portable engine to power it and you could drive quite a lot of powerful tools that would do the work of many people. The hoses though, those are still a problem. Flexible would be good, but I'm not sure how we can do that without rubber. Of course it can also be used for food preservation. Tanks of compressed air expanding to cool ice boxes.
     "Aside from that there would be improved metals for tools, new equipment and machinery, construction techniques. I would say explosives, but..." I jerked a thumb back towards the Mediator behind me.
     "Huhn," Chaeitch rumbled. "Anything else you can come up with? If I can itemize, it would give me an idea of where we can save time."
     There was some time spent on that subject, trying to recall what I could about construction techniques and all the ancillary costs involved in such projects. I'm not sure my memory even scratched the surface.
     "That's what I can recall," I said as Chaeitch waved a full sheet of paper to dry the ink. "I'm pretty sure there's a lot more. I can do some research and see what I can find."
     "Appreciated," he said and then sighed. "And there's the other big problem."
     "Which is?"
     "The other lands. After Bluebetter they will also expect tours."
     I nearly inhaled my drink. "They... what?" I coughed. "Seriously? You know we barely survived that one trip? Three months of dodging knives, and that was just the neighbors!"
     "A. Quite," he said. "But it will happen. Unless you have a better idea?"
     "You're the second person to ask me that," I said and knocked back what was left in my glass. It burned on the way down. "Damn it, I might... I'm not sure."
     He cocked his head. "Really? What would it be?"
     "Ah," I hesitated, then said, "Not yet. I still want to try and figure out why it won't work before I make a fool of myself."
     "Have more [confidence/faith?] Some of your ideas can be quite useful. Odd, but useful."
     "Thank you. I think."
     "When can you tell us?"
     "I don't know," I sighed. Took a breath and felt my heart drubbing. "Look, stop by two nights from now. After seven," I said. "I should have a better idea then. And let you know what I've found for your list."
     His head went back fractionally. I saw his pupils dilate wide.
     "And I might have some of those bottles of the old stuff laying around."
     "Then how can I refuse," he said slowly. "After seven."
     "A. Thank you. And now, I'd better hurry or I'll miss my next meeting."
     "This late? Who's this with?"
     "Ahh, that's a bit difficult. Apparently, I now own an inn."
     "What?"
     "That's exactly what I said."
     He stared at me and then shook his head. "Alright. Please explain."
     "That stray couple I assisted a while back?"
     "I believe I recall."
     "And I think I told Tich to give her any assistance she required."
     Carefully he waved acknowledgement, "A."
     "She opened an inn. Apparently I'm a partner."
     He kept staring. Blinked. Then slashed a negative. "No. No I refuse to believe this. You, running an inn!"
     "Hey! I didn't say running it. I'm just a partner. Silent, at best."
     "At any rate, my eyes won't believe my ears unless they've seen what I've heard." He pushed his paperwork aside, stood, rolled his shoulders. "Come on then."
     "What?"
     "You can show me this involuntary investment opportunity," he said as he headed for the door, "and we can see how hard she's ridden you."
     "You think it'll be that bad?"
     He opened the door and almost grinned at me. "From past experiences around you, I reserve judgment until after the smoke clears."

The district wasn't in the highfalutin part of town, but it wasn't in the Cracks either. That was a promising sign, I reflected as the rattle of carriage wheels on cobbles changed to a deeper rumbling of flagstones. There was a square there, actually a circular plaza — a confluence of avenues with a frozen fountain and small park in the center. Gas lamps glowed around the periphery, feeble in the freezing evening mist.
     "Merchant halls," Chaeitch noted, gesturing at some of the big stone buildings. "Hostels and work houses. Huhn."
     "Is that important?"
     "It is if you want to sell food," he said.
     We rumbled to a halt at one edge of the plaza. Over toward the river, if my sense of direction was still working in the fog. The buildings where were cut stone, three stories high. Some of them with arched portico's running along the front. Lights were burning in a stableyard, a wagon emerging from the gates and clattering off into the night. Other establishments were dark, shutters closed.
     Except for the building at the end of the row. That looked open for business.
     Jenes'ahn disembarked, head twitching around, looking, listening, smelling for anything out of place. I followed Chaeitch, and almost bumped into him standing and staring up at the place.
     Stone. Four floors, if you counted the garrets tucked into the steep roof. Green-painted trim. Scaffolding up the left corner where the wall was being repointed and timbers painted. Tiniest glimmers of light peeked from shutters closed over mullioned bay windows in the front. The slate hanging outside was blank, slathered with white paint.
     "This is it?" Chaeitch asked.
     "I think so," I said, looking around at what I could see in the dark. "This square. This building."
     "No name yet," he noted and headed for the door. "Perhaps the Hairless House?"
     "Laugh it up, fuzz-nuts," I retorted.
     The front door opened, spilling orange lamplight from around the Rris who emerged, wiping her hands on a rag. Saw me. Straightened to something that was almost like attention.
     "Sir! Welcome, sir."
     "Thank you, Ea'rest," I said. "Not too late in the day, I hope?"
     "Not at all, sir. It's an honor, sir. Please, come in! Enter!"
     I did so, but Jenes'ahn pushed in before me, sniffing the air as she entered the tavern. I sighed, then followed, ducking under the low lintel.
     Inside was dimly lit — just a few oil lamps burning in places. It was also apparently still in a state of renovation; furniture, tables and benches were stacked over against a wall. The wooden floor was being sanded and polished, by hand from the tools scattered about. Rickeylooking ladders and trestles were in place where walls were being plastered.. A ceiling lamp had been lowered on its rope for refueling. The floor was flagstone and wood predominated elsewhere, from the huge old beams in the ceiling to the iron-bound support posts to the polished wood of the booths and wall paneling. There was a smell of paint in the air, and also... cooking?
     'Thank you for coming, sir," Ea'rest was saying. "I was told you were away on palace business. I trust it was successful."
     "It was... informative," I said. "Ah, this is Chaeitch ah Ties. And a Mediator who isn't important right now. This is Ea'rest aesh Sitaena. And Rothi is here somewhere?"
     "Sir. Constable. Welcome. And Rothi is in the kitchen at the present. I expect you would like a viewing of the premises?"
     "I thought I should see what I was paying for," I said. "And I see you're making repairs. It needs it?"
     "In some place, yes, sir," she said. "Nothing structural, just worn and old."
     "It's a desirable location," Chaeitch said. "How did you find this?"
     "Ah, sir, I have some contacts from a previous occupation," she said, a little awkwardly. "They mentioned this and a good deal was offered."
     "Huhn," he huffed, looking around. "Perhaps we could have aesh Smither look over those figures, a?"
     Ea'rest looked a little taken aback. "It seemed a sound offer, sir," she said, "and they are not the sort to drown another blade. But if you think it a prudent step, then by all means. But perhaps you should inspect the premises first? Please, sir, this way."
     She led us back toward the kitchens. There were more lights burning back there.
     "Things are a little tidier back here. And it's fortunate timing, sir. We've just taken them out of the oven."
     'Them' were ceramic and pottery dishes, round and rectangular in shape and containing pastry crusts, that a gangly adolescent was hauling from an oven of a wooden paddle-like thing and setting on a table to cool. The kitchen wasn't huge, with tiled floor and rough whitewashed walls, and it was dominated by a stone and brick hearth slotted with ovens and grills that looked to be open hearth, stove, grill, and rotisserie all in one. There was a sink with a pump handle over under a shuttered window. Cupboards and storage. Other doors off to back rooms or sculleries I guessed. No sign of a health inspectors permit anywhere. The air was warm and smelled of cooking, of hot food and breads. "I wanted to see how quickly we could make them," Ea'rest was explaining. "And what sort of ingredients would be needed."
     Rothi placed a last dish on the table, then put the paddle aside and took up a cloth, wiping his hands as he hurried over to his mother, staring at us with wide, amber eyes. "Ah Rihey," he started. "I am most sorry about what happened..."
     "Don't be," I said. "It happened. It's done. And it wasn't your fault. I'm more interested in what you're doing now."
     He looked up at Ea'rest, perhaps unsure of what I wanted to hear. "I did say she makes good pies," he said.
     Chaeitch's ears pricked up. "You have a specialty?"
     "I was always partial to smoked buffalo and cheese," Ea'rest said. "But I wanted to see what I could do from local ingredients." She gestured at the pies, ticking them off. "There's buffalo steak, turkey, marinated venison, smoked fish, grilled liver and kidney, jugged hare, eel, egg and smoked turkey, plum and brandy, [peanut] and maple and blueberry."
     She ducked her head. "Those are my best. Others... not so much."
     They liked their savory pies.
     So, we ended up sitting around the kitchen table, sampling hot pies and discussing where Ea'rest wanted to take the business; what plans she had, what sort of income, customer client numbers, expenditures... all that financial stuff. And I resolved that Rraerch would be paying a visit and making sure it was done right.
     "And the biggest problem at the moment?"
     "The ice cellar," she promptly answered and waved a spork towards a door. "It's still being dug out. If it's not completed before spring we won't be able to stock with ice. If we can't store goods properly we'll have to order piecemeal locally. That costs more. A lot more."
     The venison was good. Marinated, she'd said. It'd certainly been infused with something that might've been fruit at some time. "What's the delay?" Chaeitch asked.
     "Small space," she said. "Only a few workers can dig. And they have to brace and prop as they go. It's not fast."
     "Might be ways around that," he said, licking shards of maple and blueberry from his chops.
     Were there? There were. It depended how much money you wanted to throw at it. In fact, looking around the kitchen, there were more than a few things that caught my eyes.
     "Ea'rest," I ventured. "This is your undertaking. I understand that. But would you mind if I were forward enough to offer some suggestions?"
     She blinked, then cocked her head. "Such as?"
     "Umm, well, do you know what I do here? For Land-of-Water?"
     "It has been explained to me. I'm not sure I entirely understand."
     I looked at Chaeitch. "Perhaps you could explain better than I." He chewed. Swallowed. Looked thoughtful as he waved his fork in little circles. "Mikah knows things. Ideas he brought from his home, wherever that may be. He has ideas and knowledge that can be quite beneficial."
     "Ah Ties," Jenes'ahn growled from the background. "Be wary."
     "Constable," he said, "it's an inn. Will a new kind of frying pan tilt the world?"
     "You will notify the Guild of any new ideas, won't you."
     "Isn't that why you're here?" I asked and turned back to Ea'rest. "Anyway, that's sort of what I do: offer suggestions that might help."
     "Oh?" she stared at me. I might've offended her by insinuating she couldn't do this thing, but I couldn't really tell. "Very well, what might you suggest?"
     "A stove that is cheaper to run and works better than that," I jerked a finger at the builtin mass of stone and brick that was currently used for cooking. "And perhaps running water, hot water and heating, better windows with double-glazing, insulation, lighting. Huh, and how about a cold room that doesn't need ice?"
     "A what?" Ea'rest blinked.
     "Really?" Chaeitch chewed steadily.
     "A test case, a?" I said. "A small one."
     Ea'rest looked confused and Chaeitch kept chewing. "And for power?" he asked.
     "A small engine? That would also provide heating and hot water. Perhaps more."
     "Huhn," he mused.
     "What are you talking about?" Ea'rest protested, looking confused.
     "Apologies," I said. "A bit carried away. It's something we should discuss with you."
     "Perhaps not," Jenes'ahn growled. "Some of that information might be bordering on the Guild restrictions."
     "Which side of the border?" Chaeitch asked.
     "Remains to be seen," she said. "If you started testing such things in a place like this, you would get..." I could see some relays up-top clicking into place and she trailed off.
     "Every local agent for anybody who is anybody dropping by to see what was being served?" I offered.
     "Huhn," she huffed, then subsided. Obviously thinking.
     "Sir?" Ea'rest ventured again, "Do you mean to take this place over?" She prodded at that question like you might a sore tooth.
     "No. No," I said. "As I said I can offer... suggestions that may be helpful."
     "Such as a better stove," she said, dubiously.
     "Like that. Yes. And you can absolutely refuse if you choose. And of course I would be covering the full cost of it."
     "Ah." Her ears popped up like semaphore flags. "Then I see no problem with that, sir. You are, of course, a part-owner of these premises."
     "A. But you're the one working and living here. I would ask permission."
     "Thank you, sir."
     I turned to Chaeitch. He was conducting further calculations into the value of pie. "It makes sense. There's a point where things have to be tested by the people who use them. This is as good as any, a?"
     "Pending Guild approval, a?" he said. "And do you plan to introduce new foods also?"
     I looked at Ea'rest. "I don't know. You have pies. What else?"
     "The usual stew, sir," she said. That would be the pot that was eternally simmering in the inns I'd seen. Usual ingredients were: anything that was going or had been going at some point in the past. Literally pot-luck. "Then there's roast and smoked and salted meat, bread and whatever wine and alcohol we can afford. Anything else depends on the ice room and suppliers."
     "I might be able to offer some suggestions there," I said. "Especially if the cold room works out. I think iced cream might be popular in summer."
     Chaeitch's head came up. "You think? Rot, aesh Sitaena, when it comes to food he has some very interesting ideas. Just the novelty would drag people through the door."
     "Hey, just look around a little," I said. "You've got plenty to offer. There was a dish I had in Red Leaves that would be very welcome on cold nights."
     He took another bite of his dish and didn't quite grin, "Aesh Sitaena, something you'll have to understand about being around him is that people are interested in him. Especially certain types who're always looking for a way up. When they learn that he's involved in this business — however peripherally — they will be scrabbling at the windows to get in. You may want to take advantage of that. Now, while the night is young, perhaps we should see the rest of your establishment. A? And the pie, by the way, is all excellent."

That evening had been a low-priority, but nevertheless interesting interlude. A welcome distraction from other things.
     The tour of the inn had been educational. There was the kitchen, a scullery. There were store-rooms and pantries and airing cupboards. There were a couple of rooms that could be used as private spaces. We'd clambered up the narrow back-stairs lit by the glow of a lantern. There'd been hallways and bedrooms of differing size and in different stages of refurbishment. There were servants' garrets up in the roof, dusty and unoccupied. We'd descended the more elegant main stairs back to the main room.
     "Not a worthless investment, I think," Chaeitch proclaimed from his seat as the carriage rumbled away. "And if you use it for testing some devices... Well, then, you will get a lot of curious customers."
     "There will be Guild observation in place," Jenes'ahn interjected. "You cannot just dispense disruptive material at will!"
     "Constable," Chaeitch sighed. "It will be things like pots and pans. A new stove. Heating and cooling. We can make them, but they have to be cheap and easy to make and still work well under use. A property like that under our control seems as good as any tests we could come up with."
     "And your cold room?" she asked. "That is not 'pots and pans'! You know what that could do."
     "A," I said. "I know it's an important device. As is the engine that'll drive it. That's why it won't have any parts people can get at. All people will see will be a closed box. It can be tested and evaluated in a real location with some security. The last thing you need or want is those steam engines being used all over the city."
     "That dangerous?"
     "That dirty," I sighed. "A few hundred of those in the city and you won't be able to breathe. It's supposed to be temporary, but once people find something is convenient it can be difficult to take it away from them."
     She glowered in the darkness. "Then you see why I don't believe this should be permitted."
     "The cold room will have to be developed. It's going to be vital for your whole society. There are disruptive aspects to it, but those are absolutely outweighed by the benefits: food can be kept safely for longer and cheaper; food can be transported long distances without spoiling. There are medical applications; technical and mechanical applications; whole new schools of learning revolving around low temperatures."
     "And your engine?"
     "That's the real problem. Only because we don't have another way of driving the cold room yet. Electricity is being worked on. Water might do it, but that's difficult in the center of a city. And gasoline engines are really not something you want to start replying on. So, we try a small steam engine running from a boiler that also provides other services for the inn: water and heating and pumping."
     "Those things still stink," he said.
     I waved agreement and shrugged, "Perhaps we can clean it up?"
     "I'd be interested to hear how," he growled and leaned back, turning his head to stare out the window. "Those devices smell foul enough. And if soot starts fouling the laundry of some highborn you can guarantee the screeching will be heard in the palace."
     "Then you'll just have to figure something out, a?" I said.
     "Huhn, all the work on me, again. Perhaps you'll have some ideas for that next night, a?" He turned to stare at me, eyes burning in the dark. "If you still want to go ahead."
     It'd been nice to forget about that for a time. "I think... I think we really have to."
     He tipped a hand in acknowledgement. "I will be there."

It'd started raining outside.
     Not a heavy, sustained, drumming rain. Not even a sparse drizzle. More like lumps of wet mixed with actual snow, but it was still rain. The first of spring.
     I got up from the laptop and went over to the study window. The tumbler still had a finger in it. I couldn't pronounce the name on the bottle, but it was strong and tasted like... persimmon? Apparently it was very expensive. I'd already gone through half a bottle of Dutch courage.
     The work was real enough. I'd trawled through reference on steam engines and heat pumps. What we'd already been working on was primitive by my old-world standards, but they should work. And there were the other problems — the political ones — those had a blindingly obvious solution, I just didn't know if it would work, or rather, would be allowed to work.
     And the other problem...
     I took another slug. Emptied the glass. That was... that was tonight. I stared at the icy rain for a few minutes, then returned to the desk, the work, and the rest of the bottle. And for a while that was all there was.
     "They said you're still working," said the voice after a while.
     "Oh," I looked up. Stretched. "Hi, Chi."
     She hesitated at the door, then came in. "I heard you were working on something for ah Ties."
     "Just some research for a project."
     "A? Interesting?"
     "Well, it seems I'm now part-owner of a tavern."
     A moment of blank expression. Then she chittered. "A what? You? Seriously?"
     "Truth."
     She was holding her jaw, trying to stop laughing. "Part-owner, you said? With whom?"
     "You remember her. I dragged her in. She stayed here."
     "The ill one? With the child?"
     "That's her."
     "And now she is starting a tavern? She was destitute, wasn't she? What did you do?"
     "I owed her."
     "I would have thought the opposite." Chihirae hesitated. "She was from Open Fields."
     "Near there. A."
     Another pause. "You never really said what happened there."
     "It's... complicated."
     "You think I won't understand?"
     I sighed. "No. I think it would be dangerous."
     "More so than now? I don't see how that could be."
     That stung. "I'm am trying to protect you."
     And that wasn't the right thing to say. A snort. "That is going well, isn't it. A chandelier nearly fell on us. And you still won't tell me what happened that night!"
     "It's..."
     "Dangerous to know!" she snapped back. "You have said as much many times. How much more dangerous, Mikah? More dangerous than people trying to kill me?!"
     "You don't have to stay!"
     She stared at me, then bared teeth. "You know too rotted-well about that."
     "No, I don't! Because you never said anything about it!"
     "I've told you as much as you've told me! You drag me along and you tell me nothing!"
     And then I said things.
     And she said things.
     Then there was shouting.
     And then it got worse.
     I don't recall exactly. Not the words, the details. I do remember what I felt: ringing in my ears, a raging torrent of hot frustration that swept me along and there was nothing I could do about it. I don't remember precisely how long it went on, it just seemed like a screaming age.
     The anger on her face.
     The sting of claws on mine.
     And the voice bellowing, "You can just leave!" was mine. "You want the freedom? Then take it! Go! Get out!"
     Her expression was sudden shock, then anger.
     And she snarled, turned and clawed her way out, slamming the door.
     I took a shuddering breath. My throat hurt. I retreated to the desk and the remains of the bottle. Another glass. There were distant voices shouting, yowling.
     The door banged open again and Jenes'ahn was snarling, ears flat and eyes black holes. "What the rot have you done?"
     I just stared at her.
     "You fool. You rotted, unthinking fool!" And the door slammed shut again.
     Yeah, she wasn't wrong.
     After a time I went to the window. I could see the drive from there. A small, cloaked figure struggling with a carpetbag setting off down the drive through the sleet. Damn it... I could still go down there. And do what? I could... ruin it all?
     But there was something there. Coach lamps were visible through the rain, then a carriage rattling up the gravel drive. It passed by the forlorn figure tramping the other way, then suddenly braked, the animals stuttering and prancing to a standstill. A figure hopped out, running back to the other. There was some discussion, a waving of arms, perhaps they looked back towards the house. I couldn't see. But they both returned to the carriage, which lurched into motion again, coming up to the loop, rounding it, then departing back down the drive.
     I exhaled. Inhaled the rest of my drink and shuddered.
     The halls were empty. There were distant raised voices in the house, distant shouting, but I didn't see anyone else. And Chihirae's room was empty. Barren. Clothes: gone. Books and papers and pens and her trinkets on the shelves, all gone.
     It was hurting now. Aching through the alcohol. A resurging of the deep pain that'd been damped for... for so long.
     Back in my own room I retreated to the shower and turned it up. Hot. And couldn't help remembering: days when she'd helped me, when she'd laughed, cried, sitting under a summer sun, the scent of dust and warm days. And those memories were treasures. And I could tell myself it was for the best. The best for her. I closed my eyes, tipped my head back, letting the water stream down my face.
     I punched a fist into the wall. Cracked a tile.
     Eventually, the water ran cold. I shut the faucet off and just grabbed a towel. Everything was sinking in, a leaden sensation in my chest was the only thing I was feeling as I trudged back to the bedroom. A couple of lamps were burning, not very bright. When the Rris sitting on the edge of the bed stood I flinched. Clenched the towel hanging my hand. She was wearing her Guild attire, greys and dark tones that smeared into the shadows so her eyes gleamed brighter than anything else.
     "What are you doing here?" I asked.
     "How long have you been planning this?" Jenes'ahn asked in a conversational tone.
     "Planning what?"
     A level stare for a few seconds. Then she said, "You've been gifting her gold, jewels, salable items; Ah Ties arrives at a most opportune moment. So she has assistance and funds just as this happens."
     I felt muscles twitch, tense. "I don't know what you're talking about."
     "We could ask ah Ties," she said. "He has an uncommon habit of telling the truth."
     "And he hasn't done anything. I threw her out. He took her in."
     "And you think that makes her safe?" The leather of her travel-stained padded tunic creaked as she strolled over, looked up at me. "They will come for her. The Guild won't protect her. They know that."
     "And why should they?" I said. "She's nothing to me. We're done."
     A snort. "You think that will change anything? They know."
     "Know what?"
     "Your rotted obsession. They know you obsess on a single partner. You lay with them and stay with them."
     "It's not like that."
     "It's not? You fixated on a woman, obsessed so much she was able to betray you. Then came another one and you risked your life for her. Insanity. People know this."
     "I said it's..."
     "It doesn't matter if it's not true!" she abruptly hissed at me. "It's what people know that matters! To them, what they know is the truth. Can't you grasp that?! And it means that your ridiculous little game is meaningless. Your acting was good. She didn't know, did she. She thinks you threw her out, but everyone else knows the obsession is still there."
     I stared, still dripping water on the carpet. "You have no fucking idea," I grated, and now I was getting angry. "You don't know what you're talking about."
     "I know what you've told women. I know you try to make them into something you need. Even if they're indebted to you, you go to insane lengths to keep them. Obsession."
     "And there you go again with your obligation," I snapped back. "You think it's all about what they owe you. It's not about taking."
     "And how can two know they can be together if they don't owe each other?!" she demanded.
     That hurt my head. It was talking about... relationships. But how could you... "You can't really think it's about debt?!" I protested.
     "Who said anything about debt? You keep trying to put it back on the other. Do you know what that does to a person?"
     "That's what it's about! You each have to give to the relationship!"
     "You say that, then you throw her away like that." She snorted, glared at me. "You know the Guild will withdraw their protection. His lordship has resources, but not against the likes of that. You threw her into a fire, Mikah. You think the spies in this house will report she was thrown out, that you rejected her so she has no leverage over you. I told you: people won't see that."
     "Even if..."
     "Even if it's true!" she growled. "And what they know is true is that you obsess over the woman you're with. They will see that she left and is now out from under Guild protection!"
     And I felt that unease growing. Was that right? Had I completely misread the room and dropped Chihirae into even worse trouble? I could go after her, apologize, explain, bring her back.
     And be right back where we started.
     I took a breath. "So you won't do anything to help her. I thought the Guild was the law."
     "In matters of import, we are. And she has no importance beyond what she was with you," she glared, amber eyes burning in the night.
     "And you did that! You dragged her into it. You threatened her to keep her here!"
     "And in doing so we protected her. Now, you've thrown that away. She's a mouse on the snow now. If you had cared about her you would have taken what she owed you."
     I stared, clenching fists, trying to wrap my head around something that was intrinsically, inhumanly, alien. "And you can't understand it doesn't work like that."
     A snort. She returned my stare. "And you can't explain how it does. You really want to protect her."
     "I have been trying."
     "Ah. Trying. You should do."
     That was a trap. But I bit: "How?"
     "Throw her away. Ensure others know you are no longer interested in one another."
     "I've already done that. You..."
     She just snorted, then turned and left. I stared after her, at the closing door. What the hell was she on about? There'd been shouting. I'd yelled. I had a scratch on my face from her fury. And I was dripping, standing in a wet spot on the carpet, shivering as the water chilled and anger waged with frustration.
     "Gah!" I raked wet hair back and then scrubbed my face with the towel, drying my beard out. When I lowered the towel the door was closing again as Jenes'ahn returned. "For the love of... What do you want now?"
     She stalked towards me. She was a roadmap. Old scars tracing pale streaks through her fur, parallel furrows raked across her torso, tearing shoulder down to ribs. A knurl of fur at her hips. A slash across her thigh. A...
     "And why aren't you wearing anything?" I asked, belatedly.
     The Mediator was facing me. And it was horribly like a mirror. She'd seen me before, but I'd never seen her this exposed.
     "You want to help her," she said. "This is how: You take another. Replace her."
     "Take another... you mean you and me..."
     She hissed. "It's called sex, and if people think someone else has your favor now they'll ignore her. Now, how does this work?" She grabbed me. She just reached out and caught my penis, yanking like a starter cord.
     "Ow! What the hell..."
     "You can arouse anytime, a? I can put it in my mouth. Would that help?" She favored me with a gape-jawed grin that was as erotic as lipstick on a wood-chipper.
     "Why would I want to have sex with you?!"
     "What does want have to do with it?" I tried to move back. She held and I stopped as claws pricked. "Stop squirming. You want to help the teacher," she continued. "You've said that. You asked me. This would do that. You've copulated with more than a few women; I'm too much?"
     "You're too insane," I snapped, tried to grab her hand. She caught mine, fingers interlaced and claws into the soft flesh there. That stung. I shoved forward. So did she. Smaller than me, but there was strength there.
     "You wouldn't do what could help her," the Mediator growled up at me. "All that talk of emotions for her. They're for you, aren't they. You want her as a substitute for your own females, so you don't feel apart so much. So you can use this..." She squeezed, I clenched teeth. "So you can hide behind her and not face what you should."
     "Shut your face!" I snarled back and then shoved, harder, driving her back. "You threatened her! You never did anything for her, it was all to keep me quiet! Now, you say this will help her. Really? Will it? WILL IT?!"
     The bed was behind her. She looked down, then up. Grinned something that was all teeth. "Ah. There you are. A handful."
     "Oh, that's not me," I said and pushed again. She went back onto the bed and I went down on top of her. "I'm up here," I snarled down at her and caught her both her hands, spreading them, leaning my weight down. She was smaller than me, but rangy-hard muscles under the scarred fur flexed and tensed. "And I'm asking you: is this for her or your Guild?!"
     She lay there, pinned, panting. Snarled up at me, "You won't know, will you. And you, you are erect for her? Or for yourself."
     What I did then was... wasn't love. It was anger, resentment, frustration and some desperate hope that perhaps she was actually telling the truth. I fumbled and shoved and she gave a yelping growl as we suddenly connected and we were suddenly closer than we'd ever been. She narrowed eyes, growled, snarled up at me, "Rot you! Not like this!"
     "You came to me like this," I growled. "Now you say no?"
     "I didn't say no," she hissed back. "Why not the normal way?"
     "This is normal," I retorted.
     "You are as strange as they say!"
     "Is that no?"
     She growled again, a low rumbling in her throat, then thrust her hips up. That almost hurt. I shoved back, held her down with my weight and she squirmed against me, suddenly around me, feeling so familiar and yet not. Struggled, but not fighting. Not really. She had claws on her feet, teeth, and she knew how to fight. So when I looked at her — really looked at her — she was panting hot breath, eyes dark pools, jaws gaping and pink tongue lashed around her chops.
     Oh. I should've figured. There was no way her lifestyle and outlook wouldn't leave kinks in the undergrowth. "You're..." I started to say and she hooked a leg around mine and yanked us together.
     It was sex. Of a sort. It certainly wasn't love. But that was never what I'd had with any other Rris women either. This wasn't affectionate or gentle. It wasn't passionate or fiery or any other romanticized paintjob. It was simply angry, physical, frustrated, desperate and raw. It was sweaty and animalistic and hooked onto something in each of us. Almost a fight where I lost control and she... ceded it? It wasn't normal for her, any more than it was for me. I'm sure there was discomfort in what we did, but she growled and swore at me, jerked against me with a coarse and hairy hide and didn't bring her foot claws up to eviscerate me as we hammered against the bed. She struggled and panted hot breath and snarled as I did my part without any finesse, and somewhere in there she made a noise I'd heard before. That grew. Ragged and loud as she tensed, trembling and tightening muscles, arching up under me until something went critical and she convulsed. Not as vocal as some others had been, just a coughing snarl.
     I... took longer. I'm not sure she appreciated that.
     When I was done I pushed off her, rolling away. We both lay breathing hard. I was still damp, water and sweat and damned fur stuck to me.
     "So," Jenes'ahn finally said from somewhere on the bed. "Not entirely fictional."
     "You're surprised?" I said to the ceiling.
     A snort. "Nothing you could do would surprise me."
     "Oh, I do like a challenge," I retorted, then sighed. "And now she's safe?" I asked sarcastically. "That's all it took?"
     "Fool," she muttered. "Word will spread."
     "You call me a fool and you think this will change anything?"
     "Just change what people see and they will change what they think. They'll think I replaced her."
     "And come after you."
     "I'm Guild," she said. "I can take care of myself." She sat up and touched her groin. "Rot, you and your weird organ. Next time I'm on top."
     "Optimistic, aren't you."
     She glared. "The intent is to get people to talk about us. The sooner the news gets out, the better for the teacher."
     "I can't believe you think this will work." I rubbed my eyes, raked hair back. Goddamn it, I was sore. That had been... that hadn't been something I expected or wanted to happen. I felt... drained. The anger that'd fueled all that was spent and now I was just tired.
     "It wasn't my first choice," she said. "Keeping her here to see who went after her was the preferred option, but you ask us, did you. Now this is done." She stood then. I'd expected her to head for the bathroom. Instead, she made for the bedroom door.
     "Where are you going?"
     She looked back. Impassive. Stone-faced. As naked as a Rris could be. "To write my report," she said, and then was gone.
     I stared after her, then stared up at the ceiling and considered what I'd thrown away and what I'd gained. Then I thumped my fist into the bed, "God dammit!"

Hirht took one of the tumblers from the small cabinet and offered it to me. I accepted, bolted the stuff in one hit, blinked back tears as it aerosolized on the way down.
     He stared at me.
     Finally: "I heard you had an eventful evening."
     "Things happened. Yes."
     He looked past me to where Jenes'ahn was standing by the door. I didn't turn. "I heard Aesh Hiasamra'thsi... departed."
     "Yes."
     "With Ah Ties."
     "It would seem so."
     He held out his hand. I handed the glass over and he refilled it. Rinse and repeat.
     "You are upset?" It wasn't entirely phrased as a question.
     This room wasn't his office. It was a smaller suite nearby. Nicely appointed: light gray and white stone and plasterwork, dark furniture in red woods and upholstery. The intricately filigreed French doors looked out over an inner court and a terrace. It was all ice and cold out there. The first spring shower had turned snow to slush, then refrozen. It'd made the carriage ride even more uncomfortable. And the Rris King had met me here and the first thing he'd done was offer me a drink.
     That was... considerate. And a bit concerning.
     "It happens," I said, trying to sound casual. I wasn't even sure I was fooling myself. "I think I'll be all right."
     He was studying me. "I did understand she was valuable to you. Her departure can't have been pleasant."
     "It wasn't all her," I said. "I told tell her to leave."
     A pause. "Why?"
     I shrugged. "She was always going on about how I was getting her into trouble and how people kept trying to kill her and things kept exploding. That gets old, you know."
     He was staring. He hadn't touched his drink. "So you told her to leave."
     I nodded. "A. She was not suited to my requirements. It seemed like the best option."
     "And now you've found the Mediator has value for you."
     "It has sort of worked out like that."
     He seemed to be working something out. "A," he finally said. "I believe I understand. If it's resolved to your satisfaction, then so be it. I had been told your relationships are... complicated, so I will defer to your judgement."
     I drank again. Let him make his own explanations; fit the facts to his own perceptions. I certainly couldn't.
     "I also hear that you've had a chance to examine your investment."
     "My... oh, that."
     "A. An inn. It is an interesting choice. And an interesting keeper. A royal guard, I understand."
     "Former royal guard," I said.
     "I'm not sure they ever entirely leave," he said thoughtfully. "But you have given her your backing."
     "There were circumstances," I hedged. "And from what I've seen, it's looking promising. She knows what she wants. She can give delegate and give orders. And she makes good pies."
     "Pies."
     "A."
     He gave me one of those Rris stares, then flicked an ear. "You know that is a very expensive piece of real estate."
     "So I've been told. It's a bad location?"
     "Oh, no. Very desirable, hence the value. Easy access from river and road travelers; Stables nearby; stores and eateries. It's a good location, but running a profitable business such as an inn does require a steady influx of customers. Either a good number of cheap ones, or fewer well-paying ones. But those do demand appropriate accommodations. Perhaps more than just pies can provide, a?"
     That was just business 101. "We might be able to do that," I said.
     He lapped from his drink, looking interested over the rim of the glass.
     "I have a few ideas that might be useful. Guild willing."
     "Ah. And these would be... ?" he prompted.
     "A work in progress, at the moment," I hedged. I had ideas, but there were always issues. "If we can make them, it would be a trial to see how reliable they are, how easy to use, how they perform in everyday use. In a controlled place. Under Guild supervision."
     He sipped his drink again, considering that. "I see. And these ideas could be beneficial to your business."
     "If they work. Perhaps. There might be a novelty factor."
     Again some consideration. "Novelty. A, that it would certainly be. A very expensive novelty."
     "Is there a problem with that?" I asked. "As I understand, I can afford it."
     "I believe you can," the Rris king said. "And it's something you want to invest in?"
     "It could be interesting."
     He didn't smile. "I believe it will be. Are these innovations likely to cause concern?"
     "They shouldn't," I said. "That will be for the Guild to decide, I think."
     He looked at Jenes'ahn. "Constable, I assume you will not be making allowances due to your... relationship."
     "No, sir," she said. Nothing else, not a flicker of anything that might weigh the comment one way or another.
     "You don't think it means the Guild is getting a little too close to its responsibilities?"
     The Mediator just looked at me. "It will let us keep a closer watch over our responsibilities. I wouldn't anything to happen to him."
     I raised my glass. "And it's good to not have to worry about anything terrible happening to her."
     Again, I let him take that any way he wanted. He just inclined his head. "Of course. I'm glad you've been able to come to such an accommodation. Would that your other petitioners feel the same."
     Ah. "Other petitioners," I said. "You mean other countries. They are wanting their turn."
     "Most persistently."
     I nodded. "North, this time? Perhaps Overburdened?"
     I saw him react to that. He narrowed his eyes. "Again. How do you know this? Has someone been talking to you..."
     "No. Nothing like that. It's just predictable."
     "Then you know what we're asking."
     "Yeah, I do. And I have to say no."
     He just stared at me. He didn't look surprised. "You know that people aren't going to accept that," he eventually said.
     "I know," I said, sighed. "But, this grand tour thing won't work. It's obvious it won't work. Sir, people died! A lot of people. On this one trip alone. And that was with the enemy being sabotaged. That won't happen again."
     "And this journey was to a neighbor; right next door. What happens when Seas-ofGrass want their turn? That's months away. You would need to send an army for protection. How well would that be received? And whoever's behind this would only figure ways around: bribe guards, set traps, ambushes. And, of course, all that time the other countries would be getting more impatient; demanding their turns, perhaps deciding that if they can't meet me then nobody will." I tapped a finger against my glass, shrugged. "It wouldn't end well."
     He sighed. Looked at his glass, then set it down. "That's not a certainty. But other parties are getting impatient. If they don't meet with you, then a poor ending is a certainty."
     "And when they start fighting over who is next?" I asked. "Over who they think is getting a better deal?"
     "That hasn't happened yet."
     "You know it will," I said. "This isn't going to work."
     Hirht studied me for a few seconds. "You have a better idea," he said.
     "I have an idea," I said. "I don't know if it's better or not. I don't know if it can work. I can't see any reason why it shouldn't work, but then there's a lot about Rris and your politics I don't understand. I'm not sure I can understand it."
     "Then perhaps you need someone who can." He gave me a pointed look, then carefully picked up the bottle and refilled the glasses. It wasn't yet ten in the morning, but I didn't stop him. Truth be told, it was a simple idea. Perfectly straightforward and reasonable. But I was afraid that it'd immediately be denounced as an idiotic plan; that he'd lay down a barrage of reasons why it wouldn't work. Then it'd be back to the default position of a lot of people dying for stupid reasons. Including me.
     I took the glass back. Tipped it back and forth. The air over it hazed.
     "You drink it," Hirht provided after the better part of a minute.
     "Yes, sir," I said. "Good advice. Both."
     Hirht stared again, then picked up a small bell. There was a very high-pitched tinkling, tickling the edge of my hearing. The door opened and Kh'hitch was there. He just inclined his head politely.
     "Postpone this morning's appointments," Hirht told his secretary. "I'll deal with them later. Any arguments, it's my word. But I'm not to be disturbed until I advise you."
     Kh'hitch didn't say anything, just backed out and closed the door again.
     "Now, sit." Hirht directed me over to cushions by the terrace windows. He retrieved another decanter, setting that down on the expensive little brass table and seating himself opposite. Outside, water dripped from icicles and gray sunlight highlighted refrozen slush.
     "Alright," he said. "Now, we have some time. Tell me this idea."

And some weeks later:
     None of the noises in the inn that night came from living beings. The last of the carpenters and painters had gone, leaving lingering smells of turpentine and paint and sawdust. What I could hear was the building itself, shifting infinitesimally, groaning slightly, ethereal sounds as the wind curled around the eaves, the creak of steps under my feet as I navigated the dark stairs.
     It was late, late, late. Or early. Whatever. It was pitch black outside and had been since the weather closed in late in the evening. Most normal people were in bed. Except for the ones I needed to meet. And I really hoped they got the message and were still waiting. There were promising signs of life: a glimmer of light under the door at the end of the hall.
     That room was a private one, at the rear of the ground floor. It was warm in there. Lived in. Lamps and a stove and rug and cupboards. I closed the door to the colder hall behind me. "Sorry about that," I said to the occupants. "Got to be quick. I left something simmering."
     Chaeitch and Ea'rest were over by the sideboard, casually picking from the remains of a tray of pies and a jug of something fermented. Chaeitch waved a crust and flicked an ear, his rain-cloak still dripping icy slush. "You're the one risking this. I'm amazed the guild isn't on us already."
     "It's an age of wonders," I said and waved the bowl I was carrying. "My alibi is that I need some hot water."
     "Kettle's almost dry," Ea'rest said. "Allow me."
     She took the black contraption and head for the scullery and the pump.
     I asked, "How's she doing?"
     He snorted and finished his mouthful. "Ah, so that's what this is about."
     Of course it was. It'd been two weeks. Two weeks of wondering. Two weeks of not knowing exactly what I'd done. Wondering what if she was all right and unable to ask. There'd always been someone there. Usually a certain Mediator who was more trouble than she was worth and who said the same of me. "It's the only chance I've had," I said. "So, how is she?"
     He waggled a hand. It wasn't quite a shrug. "She is... managing."
     "You haven't told her, have you?"
     "No. No, of course not," he said. "She asked. I played ignorance. But, she isn't stupid, and she knows you as well as anyone. She... suspects. She was furious at first; insulted, as you would expect. Then she calmed down. I think she did some thinking."
     "Oh."
     "She didn't say anything. Not to me. But she's not hissing when I say your name anymore."
     "You didn't defend me too much?"
     "No. You know she can be very insulting when she puts her mind to it."
     I winced. "I don't think I need details. You know if you need something I can..."
     This time his wave was dismissive. "Don't bother. It's not a burden. She's a good person."
     And they had a history together. He wasn't a stranger to her. This might have happened sooner if the Guild hadn't interfered, if I hadn't ignored everything and assumed and obsessed. Everything considered, he was the best person I could expect to adopt a stray.
     He peered at me. "That's all you wanted? To find out if she's all right?"
     I nodded.
     "It's that important? You couldn't have enquired through channels?"
     "I don't think I'd trust it from anyone else's mouth. And asking someone else would mean... if anyone else finds out that... that I still had an interest, then she might be in real trouble."
     He looked around as Ea'rest returned. She blinked at us, then moved to set the kettle down on the black iron stove. A few droplets of water hissed.
     "So," I said. "I wasn't here, a?"
     "Understood," he said, somewhat subdued. "And now I'd also better not be here. You be careful, a? Mikah?"
     "You too. Thanks. For everything."
     "And gratitude for your hearth, aesh Sitaena," he said. "I'll be back with the rest of the plans drawn up. Best fortune with your endeavors." He flicked an ear again and stalked out.
     Ea'rest watched him leave, wiping her hands on a towel. Then she nodded at the kettle. "Some time to boil, sir."
     "Don't need it that hot," I said. "Give it a few minutes."
     "Yes, sir."
     "And I do have something to ask you: I need your help."
     She blinked, then said, "Of course, sir. If I can."
     "I need to find somebody. Who doesn't want to be found. I'm not even sure she's in Shattered Water, although I suspect she will be. It's important."
     She tensed visibly. "Dangerous, sir?"
     "I really don't know," I said. "It shouldn't be. I just need to know where she is. If she comes to town, I would like to know."
     She wrung the towel as she thought about that. "Why are you asking me, sir?"
     "You were guard, weren't you? A rather particular guild? Held in high esteem."
     "A," she said cautiously.
     "I understood you might still have ties there."
     "I..." she hesitated. "I don't know, sir. There are considerations: the guild is... circumspect. If she has been a client, then there is confidentiality contracts."
     "Ah," I nodded. "I doubt she has been. She moves in... different circles."
     She twisted the cloth again, came to some conclusion and gave me a look with considerably more certainty. "Yes, sir. There are some people I could make inquiries with. They have some experience along those lines, but I can't promise anything more than that."
     "That's all I ask. If anything is needed, if money or anything is required, just ask."
     "Yes, sir. Can you provide some more information?"
     I gave her some details: the best physical description I could, some background, mannerisms, likes, dislikes, a title.
     "A book?" Ea'rest blinked.
     "A. She wrote it. Published it. So it has to be printed somewhere. And I assume she gets paid for it."
     She cocked her head. "That might be useful. Very good, sir, I will ask some people. They will let me know what they can do. I will tell you."
     "Thank you," I said and eyed the steaming kettle. "And I think my time's up."
     So I carried the bowl of hot water back through the dark inn, back up the stairs, swearing as I slopped hot water on my wrist. Work was still being done on the inn, some upgrades and modernization that'd already been tried and proved on my home. Insulation was in, so was double-glazing on most windows, but plumbing and some of the other innovations were going to take time. Still, the bedroom was comfortable enough. And it was handy for business trips — much closer to town. I got the door open, entered, then nudged it shut behind me with a foot.
     "And here we are," I said cheerily as I set the basin down on the tray along with the cloth and soap and razor. The room was a good room: comfortable, without being ostentatious. "Didn't take long, did it."
     Jenes'ahn just gave me a low, rumbling growl back.
     I carried the tray over to the bed. Set it down beside me as I sat. "Don't be like that," I said. "Good things take time, a?"
     She growled something through the makeshift gag, ears twitching over the blindfold. The four cords keeping her tied and spread-eagled on the bed weren't fancy, but they worked. And when she realized what I was doing, when the razor made its first delicate strokes down there between her legs, she jerked against them and vented a startled snarl.
     I grinned back.
     "Surprise!"
     Yeah, she was furious.
     Totally worth it.