If he hadn't been just as eager and cheerful when losing at three-bone, orwhen helping one of his mates back to barracks after a brawl or a binge, or when dodging the officer of the watch to illicitly collect a few oranges from the groves north of the city, he would have been insufferable. And he had never been known to betray a trust or let down a comrade.

Thus he got along well enough, but got more than his share of odd and unpleasant duties-such as escorting Lieutenant Sen-den's sister home after she was found drunk and naked in the Wall Street Field.

She had been safely delivered and had even showed signs of sobering up when Deran had departed and headed back toward the north barracks tower. It was well past midnight, perhaps as much as two hours past, when Deran passed the Drunken Dragon and noticed the footprints in the muddy surface of Wall Street.

He did not ordinarily go about staring at the ground, but the mist had turned back to rain, and he had not bothered with a hat or helmet or cloak, so he was hunched forward a little, and so he noticed with mild interest the patterns of footsteps. There were several lines that ran along the middle of the street; that made sense. There were lines running in and out of the Drunken Dragon-mostly out; that, too, made sense, as the Dragon was still open, despite the hour. There were a few lines in and out of the Wall Street Field, each one alone-the Field never slept, as the saying had it, but most of its inhabitants did, so traffic in and out was light and scattered at this time of night.

And there were steps leading in and out of the alley beside the Drunken Dragon. The line coming out was widely spaced and smeared, as if whoever made those marks had been running and slipping.

That was odd.

Most guardsmen, and virtually all citizens, would have shrugged and kept walking. Deran, though, was Deran. He stopped and peered into the shadows of the alley.

Something was lying on the ground in there, and it didn't look like garbage.

If it was someone sleeping there, then whoever it was was fair game for slavers, and Deran should either wake that person up and shoo him across the street to safety, or he should go fetch a slaver and collect a finder's fee, depending on whether he wanted to be benevolent, or to be paid.

If it was anything else . . .

Well, it bore further investigation, and the light in the alley was terrible.

Deran turned back a few steps to the door of the inn and took one of the signboard torches from its bracket.

Being in the city guard did have its little privileges, he thought as he carried the hissing brand over to the mouth of the alley. If an ordinary citizen took down a torch from an open place of business it would be theft and good for a flogging.

Dim as it was in the damp weather, the torch made the scene in the alley much clearer. Deran stared down at the man lying there in a spreading pool of blood, blood that had mixed with the muck so that it was hard to tell where the edge of the pool actually was.

There wasn't as much blood as he had first feared, actually; much of the red was the man's kilt.A red kilt usually meant a soldier or a veteran; if there had been any question about leaving the man where he was-and for Deran, there really wasn't-that put an end to it. The man in the alley was not anyone Deran recognized, but soldiers looked out for their own.

Whoever the unconscious person was, he was a big man, and Deran was not large for a guardsman, and it was late and he was tired and the mud was slippery. He sighed and headed for the door of the Dragon, torch in hand.

A tavern crowd, Deran knew, generally had a distinctive sound of its own. It chattered, or hummed, or buzzed, or even shouted. The patrons of the Drunken Dragon muttered, a sullen, low-pitched sound that quickly faded when a guardsman in uniform stepped in, holding up a torch.

"I need a hand here," Deran announced. "We've got a wounded man just around the corner."

The half-dozen customers who still lingered stared silently at him. Nobody volunteered anything, by word or motion.

That didn't trouble Deran. "You," he said, pointing at the individual who looked least drunk of those present. "And you," indicating another.

"Oh, now . . ."the second man said, beginning a protest. "Five minutes, at most," Deran snapped, cutting him off, "and if you don't. . . well, we don't need to worry about what would happen then, do we? Because you're going to cooperate."

Grumbling, the two men got to their feet.

Deran wasn't stupid enough to walk in front of them; he had never been in the Drunken Dragon before, but he knew its reputation. He directed the two "volunteers" out the door and followed them as they slogged around the corner.

The wounded man was so much dead weight; he showed no sign of life at all as the three men-one taking his feet and the others a shoulder apiece-hauled him into the tavern and dumped him on a table.

That done, Deran dismissed his two assistants, paying them for their trouble by telling them, "I owe you a favor-a small one. If you ever get in trouble with the guards-small trouble- you tell them Deran Wuller's son will speak for you."

The two men grumbled and drifted away, leaving Deran and his prize alone.

Deran turned his attention to the bloody figure before him.

There were only two wounds that he could find, both in the fleshy part of the man's thigh-a long, shallow slash and then a deep stab wound that had missed the artery, Deran judged, by no more than an inch. Most of the blood came from the stab; the slash had already started to scab over.

"Are you going to leave him there dripping all over my floor?" demanded a voice from behind Deran. The guardsman turned and found himself facing an aproned figure a bit shorter than himself.

It was the innkeeper, of course-or rather, Deran corrected himself, the innkeeper's night man; Deran doubted that the broad-shouldered fellow with the ferocious mustache was actually the proprietor."Until you find me a bandage, that's exactly what I intend," Deran answered.

"And a clean rag to wipe the wound first would be a good idea, too."

Grumbling, the night man retreated, while Deran checked the stabbing victim over.

There were no other recent wounds; his heartbeat was strong and regular, his breath steady and reeking of oushka. He was, Deran concluded, unconscious as a result of his drinking, not from the wound. While bloody, the injury just wasn't that serious.

The innkeeper's man returned then with a handful of reasonably clean rags, and Deran set about cleaning the man up a little. As he worked, he questioned the night man and the remaining customers.

Nobody knew the man's name. Nobody knew what had happened to him. He wasn't exactly a regular, but he had been there before. He might have been seen with a girl, a black-haired girl wearing dark clothes.

And that was all anyone would tell him.

When Deran pulled the bandage tight, the drunk opened his eyes.

"Am I dead?" he asked blearily. "Am I going to die?"

"You're fine," Deran said. "You might limp for a while."

The drunk tried to raise his head from the table to look at himself, but couldn't manage it. He moaned.

"What happened?" Deran demanded. "Who stabbed you?"

"Nobody," the wounded man muttered. "Was an accident."

Deran shrugged. "Fine. You owe the Dragon two bits for the bandages and the use of their table. If you change your mind about who stabbed you, tell the magistrate . . ."He hesitated, turning to the night man. "This is Northangle, right?"

"Grandgate. Northangle starts at the comer."

"All right, tell the magistrate for Grandgate, then. And if you need me to testify, I'm Deran Wuller's son, Third Company, North Barracks." He yawned.

"And that's where I'm headed- I need to get some sleep." He waved and departed.

By the time Deran was out the door the night man was trying to get his wounded customer off the table and back on his own feet.

At the north tower he almost headed straight for his bed, but his sense of duty stopped him. He checked the lieutenant's room first.

Sure enough, Lieutenant Senden was waiting up for him.

"Is she all right?" the lieutenant asked anxiously.

"She's fine," Deran said. "No problem at all."

"Then what took so long?""When I was on my way back I practically tripped over this boozer lying in an alleyway."

The lieutenant grimaced. "You called the slavers?"

Deran shook his head. "No," he said. "It wasn't entirely his fault. He'd been stabbed. So I hauled him into the nearest tavern and got him bandaged up.

Wasn't anything serious, just a flesh wound in the leg."

"Did he say who did it?"

"No. Might've been a girl he was bothering."

"All right. Goodnight, then, Deran-and thanks."

"My pleasure, Lieutenant."

Deran judged that he had no more than three hours until dawn when he finally fell into his bunk.

Senden, too, was quickly asleep.

The following day he was somewhat irritable, as a result of a late night largely spent in worrying, and carried out his duties in perfunctory fashion; his monthly report to Captain Tikri, a recently added requirement that Senden did not care for, was brief and sketchy. He did note down, "Guardsman Deran reports tending to stabbing victim in tavern. No accusations or arrests made."

Late that afternoon, at the overlord's palace, Captain Tikri had just finished going through the reports from all the guard lieutenants when Lady Sarai stepped into his office. The captain leapt up and saluted, hand on chest.

Lady Sarai waved an acknowledgment, and Tikri relaxed somewhat. "Is something wrong, my lady?" he asked.

"No, no; I just wanted to get out of that room for a few minutes," Sarai explained, "so I came myself instead of sending a messenger. I'm here in both my official roles today, Captain, as Minister of Investigation and as Acting Minister of Justice. Is there anything I should know about?"

Captain Tikri looked down at the reports he had just read. He turned up a palm.

"Nothing, my lady," he said. "Nothing of any interest at all."

CHAPTER 10.

Tabaea had expected the feeling of strength and power to wear off within a few minutes, like the excitement after a narrow escape.

It didn't.

Instead, the strength stayed with her. The light-headedness faded fairly quickly, but the added strength stayed. If anything, it increased, at least at first.

She had hidden behind a merchant's stall in Grandgate Market, crouched down between a splintery crate and the brick wall of a granary-not a place for long concealment, by any means, but she was out of sight, able to think and plan, until the merchant arrived for the day's business. For the first severalminutes, she had just sat, waiting for the weird reeling to pass.

Eventually, though, she had realized that this was not working. She began thinking about it.

She felt strong. Most especially, her left leg seemed to be almost bursting with vitality. She knew she had stabbed the kilted drunk in his left leg, so the connection was obvious. Was it an illusion, though, or was she really, truly stronger than before?

Measuring strength, especially in a leg, was not something that Tabaea had any easy method for doing; she tried out a few kicks at the crate beside her, and then tried hopping, first on her almost-normal right leg, then on her empowered left for comparison.

It was hard to be sure; she knew, from her work as a thief, how people could fool themselves without meaning to. All the same, she concluded at last that yes, the feeling of strength was genuine; somehow, she had become stronger.

And it was fairly obvious how-when she had stabbed that man in the left leg with her dagger, her left leg had become stronger. The connection could hardly be coincidence.

The black dagger, which she had known for four years to be enchanted, had somehow given her that strength because she had stabbed the drunk.

This was serious magic.

Unfortunately, she didn't yet know the details. Was this added strength permanent? Would the magic work again, or had she used it up? Where had the strength come from-the dagger's magic, or the drunk? Had the dagger created it, or only transferred it? And what else did the dagger do? How dangerous was it? Had it stolen the man's soul? Would it eat her soul? She could think of three ways to find out more about it. One was to ask a magician-but that was out. How could she do that without revealing that she had stolen the secret of atha-mezation? Even if she claimed to have found the dagger, many magicians could tell lies from truth.

No, asking anyone was out of the question.

The second possible method was to stab someone or something else and see what happened.

She supposed she would have to do that sooner or later, but she wasn't about to just go out and stab some stranger chosen at random.

And the third way to learn more would be to find the man she had stabbed and see what had happened to him. Had the dagger killed him? Had it devoured his soul? Had something horrible happened to him?

She didn't know his name, but she knew where she had last seen him. That was, she decided, where she should start-but not until dawn. She sat back, resolved to wait until first light.

The next thing she knew, she was waking up because someone was pulling her to her feet. "Hoi!" she said, "wait a minute!" "The sleeping blossom awakens, then," someone said.

"You call her a blossom? An insult to flowers everywhere.""Oh, she's not as bad as that," a third voice said. "Clean her up and comb that hair, and she'd be fit company."

Blinking, Tabaea saw blue sky over the shoulder of the man who held her and realized that it was well past first light and that she had fallen asleep behind the crate and been discovered by the merchant and his-or her-family.

The man was not alone; a woman stood behind him, and two boys to the side.

"I'm sorry," Tabaea said, a little blearily. "I was hiding."

The man and woman looked at each other, concerned; the older boy, who looked about fourteen, was more direct. "Hiding from what?" he demanded.

Tabaea recognized the boy's voice as the one that had called her an insult to flowers everywhere. "From a drunkard who apparently liked my looks better than you do," she retorted.

The woman glanced uneasily over her shoulder.

Tabaea waved her worry away. "That was hours ago," she said. "I must have dozed off."

"Oh." The woman's relief was palpable.

Tabaea found the woman's behavior unreasonably annoying; what was she worrying about, when she had her husband and sons to protect her? But there was no point in arguing with these people. "I'll go now," Tabaea mumbled.

The man released her, and she walked away across the market square. The sun was peering over the wall to the east, its light blazing across the gate towers, while most of the market was still in shadow. Steam curled out from the tower walls where hot sun hit cold, damp stone, but otherwise the clouds and mists of the night had vanished, leaving shrinking puddles and drying mud.