Warney seized Jes-hawk's sleeve. "Might be your sister."

Jes-hawk snorted. "She moves like an old woman."

She wedged herself between two muscular miners on a cart. They cringed and slid away from her as if from a foul smell. The sandbucks whinnied, shaking their antlers, and pulled at their harnesses. Then the carts rumbled onto the floating bridge.

Jes-hawk stood in torment, watching the diminishing crowd. "Follow her. Make sure. I'm staying."

As gold brush strokes streaked the sky, mirrored on both sides of the floating bridge, Warney took no comfort. He hated this bridge, knowing that Deathweed might lunge for him at any time. "Today we'll leave this place for good," he said, pulling his cap back over his head and hurrying after the wagon. "We're going to New Abascar. Where everything'll be fine."

The main gate was made from the wide jawbone of an enormous ocean-dwelling fish, and the prongs of its raised portcullis jutted down like teeth. Beyond it, passengers disembarked and scattered. Families embraced. Merchants besieged them. Cart drivers unloaded the miners' bags, casting them into a pile on the edge of the welcome yard, where squawking netterbeaks swarmed over the spread, pulling at straps and pecking at the canvas covers.

Warney slumped on a bound-up bedroll, catching his breath. His gaze strayed to the vagrants who picked at crumbs on the cobblestone plaza, their bodies permanently hunched as if the weight of the rock's collected wealth had bent them. But what could be done? They were human wreckage, blasted apart by their indulgence in the Seers' potions.

"In New Abascar," he murmured, "we'll all have supper. We'll all have shelter. We'll all have everything. Nobody's gonna sleep in the cold. Nobody'll get thrown outside the walls for the monsters. And colors ... Auralia's colors will fly over it all like a flag." He craned his neck, tower-seeking. "Now that the Seers are surrounded, maybe the queen'll help these poor crumb-pickers."

One of the beggars skulked toward the luggage pile. "I know that sneaky step," he muttered. "You mean to steal somethin', don't you?"

She lifted her head, and he looked right into that familiar face framed by greasy red hair, the eyes wide and furious.

"Lynna!"

She was off, straightening and running, transformed from a burdened beggar to a crook caught in the act. She fled as swiftly as Krawg and Warney had ever run from the scenes of their own crimes.

Warney, warming with anger, came to his feet as if answering some unspoken call.

He followed, weaving through a parade of fish-packers, nearly knocking down a white-aproned cake-carrier, and then dancing his way through a crowd of kneeling children as they snipped marbles into brackets to win piles of colored chips.

The woman leapt onto a passing rail train that carried her away down a long curve and slid into a tunnel at the base of Bel Amica's rock. Warney reached the edge of the rails just before the train's end-an open flatcar-rattled past. He dove onto it, landing hard on his fragile knees.

The train coasted to a stop, and he waited, lying low and watching those who disembarked. She didn't appear. If she were smart, she'd stay on board until the train was lifted up the long shaft to the very top of Bel Amica's rock, where it would start its spiral descent again. There she'd have so many routes open to her that she'd be almost impossible to catch.

"That's what Krawg would do."

The lift mechanisms carried the cars two by two up the shaft. Warney's ears crackled and swelled as his own car was raised far from the ground. When they reached the top of the city, mechanical arms lifted the cars, carried them into the morning's bright white fog, and set them down on a rail line.

A bundle of dark robes flew from the train and made a frantic dash into an alley.

Warney was off, down the alley between the glittering turtle shell of Myrton's greenhouse and the tall Seers' Keep. Misshapen as a pile of ice blocks half-melted in the sun, the Keep was circled by archers-some on the ground, some poised in the windows of the five surrounding towers-all day and all night. Jaw-dogs slunk around the base of it, sniffing.

Rumors had spread that the Seers were already gone, escaping with an invisibility potion. Warney had feared the Seers ever since he'd learned that they'd sent beastmen to kill Abascar's people in the Blackstone Caves. He had feared them even more after seeing Panner Xa threaten to crush Krawg's throat for telling a story that offended her. Now they had sought to slaughter Bel Amica's royal family. He did not like the idea of such villains lurking unseen in the fog.

The escapee jerked to a stop, startled to see the archers and the dogs. She slipped between two rubbish bins against Myrton's greenhouse. Warney seized his moment. He stepped in front of her, trapping her there.

"You're a tad anxious," he said. "Don't know why you'd run from me 'less you got somethin' to hide."

The woman tucked in her chin like a chastened child.

"I was part of a company that camped in the woods with a woman who looked just like-"

"Stowey," she murmured. "My name. A stranger."

He was surprised that she did not fight or run. She seemed to have forgotten the chase. And one eye was staring at his feathered cap. His words went sideways in his throat, for the woman's eyes were wrong; they were open too wide, and they did not align. She grinned fiercely, her teeth too big for her mouth. If this was Lynna, she was diseased beyond repair.

"That's ... strange," she whispered, raising a pale hand with a long, curling fingernail. "Your hat. Tell me."

"A friend made it," he said, suddenly feeling as if he were the one cornered.

"From where?"

"Abascar," he snapped, wondering why he even answered at all. "Well, not really. She came from somewhere else. Why?"

"Those colors. Those feathers." She spoke to herself, and something like fear flickered in her eyes. "Impossible."

As Warney's next question sought its shape, the woman snatched the cap from his head. Reflexively, he grabbed hold of it. She tugged. He bared his teeth. She seized it with both hands. "Not ... allowed," she growled, her grip tightening.

As they grappled, he noticed her hands-rather, her left hand in particular. It was far too large for the small woman. It was ash grey. And it, too, was familiar.

"Those runes on your knuckles," he grunted, straining.

Her eyeballs, rolling as if they might tumble out, swiveled to see the marks as if they had only just appeared.

Even as Warney realized what he was seeing, he found his conclusion to be madness. He had seen that hand severed from the wrist of a drunkard in the Mawrnash revelhouse and cast out the window. Later, finding a hand on the ground below the window, he'd bent down for a better look and seen that it was a different hand altogether.

He dropped his cap and took hold of her wrist. "Did you ... trade your hand for this one?"

She flung herself away from him. But his grip was still fixed on her wrist, and the rune-marked hand tore right off.

She tumbled onto the road, then propped herself up on the bloodless stump of her arm. She clutched Warney's cap in her remaining hand.

Warney looked at the severed hand, then threw it down. "What ... How could ..."

She dropped the cap and launched herself at his face, shrieking. A long curling nail on her right hand's forefinger sliced like a spoon into his eye socket, gouging out his glass eye and dropping it into her closing fist. Warney cried out at a flare of pain deep in his head. He doubled over, covering his empty eye socket. She grabbed the cap and dashed away.

Warney's anger blazed hotter than his injury. He went after her.

She ran into the open, straight at the wall of the Keep. She did not stop. A break formed in the wall like a fracture in a window. It widened just enough for her to slip through.

Warney threw himself at the wall. It slammed shut, and he staggered backward, clasping a new bruise on his forehead.

Looking up, he saw a hundred arrows from nearby walls and windows aimed in his direction. He crawled on all fours away from the wall, back between the trash bins, and curled into a trembling huddle, covering his empty socket and sobbing curses at the Keep. A guard appeared with furious questions, but Warney's story was so bewildering that he retreated.

Exhausted, Warney quieted to a sulk, glowering at the impenetrable wall.

"You'd better hide," he muttered. "I'm comin' in there."

The train rumbled past ten times while Warney muttered insufficient plots for entering a building without windows or doors. He considered the strategies he and Krawg had devised in the past.

They'd stowed away in wagons loaded with bait. "But these tricksters don't want anything, save Auralia's colors." They'd cut doors in walls by night and sealed them up by sunrise. "But nothin's cuttin' through that wall." They'd blocked locks when doors were open so they'd fail to latch when closed. "These cowards won't open a door unless one of their own comes knockin'."

They had tried disguises, but how could Warney make himself look like a Seer? They'd gone down chimneys, but no smoke rose from the Keep's heights. They'd burrowed under homes, but this was rock that needed blasting.

"It's imbreakable," he said. "No, that's not right. It's unsolvable. It's ..."

"Impregnable?" said a voice behind his shoulder.

Warney leapt as if he'd been stung.

"Unassailable? Inviolable? Puzzle, puzzle. Ah, but you're wrong. If you had another season, you just might solve it."

A soot-smeared, grass-stained man stood fidgeting in a doorway that had opened quietly in back of the greenhouse. He clutched a smelly crate against his apron-draped belly while he noisily gnawed the end of a sweetstalk. What hair he had left stood out from his head like quills.

"Took me many seasons. Several years. A long time." He spoke out of the corner of his mouth. "A long time of staring out the greenhouse windows ..."

Warney waited. The old man seemed to have forgotten him already. It was as if his attention had retreated into an engine of whirling gearwheels at the back of his mind.

"Took you a long time to what?"

The old man blinked, a stone catching in the gears. "To see what no one else sees. Puzzle, puzzle." He turned to one of the trash bins, lifted the crate, and dumped a pile of rotting roots. As he strained, muscles bulged through the slack brown flesh of his arms. He almost seemed a man made of roots and branches himself. Above him, netterbeaks gathered on the greenhouse roof to see if he was disposing of anything edible.

"You're Myrton," said Warney. "The gardener."

"Gardener. Cure-maker. Chemist. Scientist. The more I study, the more mysterious the world seems. Puzzle, puzzle-I like mysteries. Well, well." He shrugged and tossed the crate aside, then turned, and a wispy smoke-reed had replaced the sweetstalk. He puffed thoughtfully.

"You fix people."

He sighed. "I've been known to try repairing a thing or two that's broken. Repair. Reconcile. Restore."

"You're workin' on a cure for them beastmen."

"Puzzle, puzzle. Better to say I pay attention to what helps green things grow healthy. Still, sha-woof! It's a dangerous trade." He raised his fingers and wiggled them to show that more than a couple stopped bluntly at their knuckles. "Perilous. Life-threatening, even. Broke my daughter's leg, you know. Blam."

"Can you make this right?" Warney pointed to his empty eye socket. "Now don't get me wrong. It's just a glassy. But it was a gift. And that's not all the blasted thief took. She's got my cap, the one Auralia made for me. And she took it in there." He pointed at the Seers' Keep. "Time's short. I'm leavin' this house today."

"Puzzle, puzzle." Myrton rubbed his hands together as if this were a game. "Eyeballs. I'm no good with glass. What else could an eyeball be? A berry. A swatter-ball. Do grapes grow big enough?" He frowned. "I've never told anybody how to get inside that Keep. Whoof! Nobody's asked. I doubt anybody who gets in will come back out alive. Perhaps as a cloud or a light or a burst of noise. Sha-wham! But not alive. Ho, no!" He spat out the smoke-reed and unpocketed a carrot to crunch.

"You're talking to the One-Eyed Bandit," said Warney. Familiar resolve burned inside him. "I've broken out of places nobody knew had an inside. But I saw that wretched woman walk right through the wall. That's some trick. How'd she do it?"

"Oh, I haven't solved the Seers' magic. Strange. Foreign. Unnatural. Yeeps! I doubt anybody born in the Expanse can rightly figure them out. Not from around here, those monsters."

"Not from the Expanse?"

"Wouldn't bet a bellflower's bud on it, Bandit!" Myrton looked down and kicked the severed hand aside. "Puzzle, puzzle. You see that? Body parts. The Seers leave a trail of them. Ever since they set foot-set foot, ha! Ever since they slithered into Bel Amica, they've been giving us potions to unbalance our wits. They distort. Dismember. Poison. They meddle. Like they have some kind of grudge. They tinker with us, like I tinker with mosses, weeds, and ivy. Except I'm trying to plant things that live, so ripe fruit falls in piles. The Seers pull up our roots and shove our stems into vases full of sweet poison."

Myrton shivered, then reached under his apron, pulled out an enormous moth, and cast it into the air. "Whoof! And here's the thing, Bandit. I think the Seers are enjoying it. Bel Amica's fools just keep coming back for more. I'm glad the queen finally drove them into hiding. But trust me, Bandit." The carrot's nub disappeared with a crunch. "They're still dangerous. You don't want to go inside that place." He tucked a celery stick between his teeth and muttered, "Six vegetables for every smoke-reed. Six."

"Auralia made that hat," Warney groaned, slumping back down to the ground and knitting his fingers over his bald head. "It's all I have left of her colors. If you had a daughter, you'd understand."

"I do have a daughter," said Myrton. "Surprise! Wow!" And then he sighed. "And I almost lost her due to my very own foolishness."

Warney glanced up at him. "Oh. Right. Sisterly Emeriene. What happened?"

"Emmy liked secrets when she was young. Wanted to be the first to know important things. Probably why she stuck close to Cyndere-to learn what went on inside the castle. She'd watch my experiments and write about them. And she happened to be there one night when my curiosity took me off the path of wisdom."

Warney listened, hoping to relay these details to Krawg so he could craft them into a fireside tale.

"It's good to want to heal broken things," said Myrton, "and of all creatures I know, nothing heals its own injuries like a shockwyrm. It's the flash that ripples through their bodies. Zzzark! I tried to catch that flash by cutting right into it. Puzzle, puzzle. Something sprayed out and hit my lantern. It blasted windows off my greenhouse. Boom! Shot fire into Emeriene's leg." He chewed the celery, lost in the memory. "Burnt the bone to breaking in three places. She'll never walk right again. Not a day goes by I don't thank the world's great mystery that she's still alive."

Myrton rubbed his hands together again as if he could clear the muddy stains. "A shockwyrm's a rare and wonderful beast. I was wrong to cut into it for curiosity. But the Seers, they're cutting into people. Rumors say that ... well ..." A shadow passed over his face. "Let's just say that I've seen more than one woman who was carrying a child go inside, then come out carrying a lesser kind of wealth in trade."

"They've bought-"

"Look, Bandit. Look." Myrton pointed up into the fog that roiled about the roof of the Keep. "What do you see?"

"Fog. Wait, sky. Nothin' else."

"Oh, there's something else. Puzzle, puzzle."

Warney squinted. Through a rip in the vapor, a sharp white thorn pricked the blue sky. "The moon!"

The moment the moon sailed into view, a burst of birds flew up from the roof of the Keep. They flapped about, cawing and crying, until another wave of fog rolled over the patch of sky again, and they settled.

"So?" Warney asked. "The moon's still up."

"Yes. But what else did you notice?"

Warney chewed his lower lip. "Birds?"

"Why did the birds rise, Bandit?"

Warney squinted again, staring at the same spot of sky. The white curtains parted to reveal the sliver of moon again. Birds flung themselves up.

"Them birds, they like the moon?"

"Do birds usually get excited about the moon? No. But who does?"

Warney came to his feet. "Seers. They're always goin' on about moon-spirits." He pointed at the rooftop. "The birds, they're scatterin' because something happens to the roof when the moon's in view."

"You ever heard of moonpetals, Warney? I could show you some inside. They're flowers that open only when the moon's in the sky. Puzzle, puzzle. They get some kind of cold nourishment from that pale light." Myrton swallowed the celery. "Tell me. Have you ever seen a Seer eat anything?"

"You're sayin' the Seers need moonlight." Warney's bony hands made fists. "You're sayin' that when the moon comes shinin', they let in the light."

"Poom! Surprise! If you really mean to go inside, that's all the help I can give you."

"Maybe not." Warney grinned. "Got a ladder?"