everyone in Speakinghast knew it. Seeing the mischievous smile on Rowenaster's old face, Gadorian settled back in his chair, certain that Rowenaster would leave him alone now. But this was not to be. Rowenaster's special area of emphasis was Greatkin
Rimble. After years of studying Trickster, a year of living with Rimble's own children—Kelandris and Zendrak—and having participated in a turning ceremony last year during a party his housemates threw for Trickster's Hallows, Rowenaster had become a little tricky himself. «Give it your best shot,» said Rowen, coming over to stand next to Gadorian's chair. The Guildmaster blinked. «Now, don't take this too far,» he muttered in a low voice to the professor. «I don't know what a Greatkin is, and furthermore I don't care what a Greatkin is.» «Well, you should,» said Rowen coolly. «My business is with this city. It's alive. The Greatkin are part of a dead religion. They're finished. And they've nothing to do with me.» «Ah, the modern mind,» said Rowenaster, his voice slightly sarcastic. Turning to the class, he asked, «Let's see a show of hands. How many of you think the Greatkin ever existed?» Everyone's hand shot into the air, including Rowen's and Gadorian's. «Okay,» continued the professor. «How many of you think there are Greatkin alive now?» Only Rowenaster raised his hand. «Worse than last year,» said Rowen. «But hardly surprising. This is the Jinnaeon: the shifttime of the world when no one can tell the difference between what is seemingly urgent—election results and grades—and what is unquestionably most important. The Greatkin being the latter,» he added with a sigh. «Professor?» asked a Saambolin girl in the front row. «May I ask you a question now? Actually, a bunch of us were discussing this before class began. We're all dying to know, see?» Rowenaster smiled, regarding the girl steadily over the top of his silver bifocals. The professor was still a handsome man, his hair gray, his skin dark brown, his posture absolutely perfect. His beard was neat, as were his fingernails. Like most Saambolin, Rowenaster was a fastidious dresser. He crossed his arms over his chest, stroking his beard with his right hand. «Ask,» he said.
«What is it like living at the Kaleidicopia? I mean, what's it like living with all the landdraws of Mnemlith at once?» Rowenaster looked at the ceiling for a few moments. The girl would have to
ask a question like this with Gadorian sitting in the room. Out of the corner
of his eye, the professor saw Gadorian sit forward in his chair to listen to his reply. Rowen pursed his lips. He would have to be very careful how he answered the girl. There were Jinnjirri present and Gadorian's draw antipathy toward the Jinn was well documented. Rowen smiled and said, «It's emotional, surprising—always interesting. Educational.» The Saambolin girl nodded. «Must be fun.» «It often is,» agreed the professor, trying to forget the row he had witnessed between Janusin and Po this morning over Po's dirty laundry, which was presently escaping the confines of Po's room on the first floor and spreading into the front hallway. «Okay,» said Gadorian pleasantly. «My turn.» Professor Rowenaster braced himself internally. He knew Gadorian was looking harder than ever for the means to shut down the Kaleidicopia. And why not? Cobeth—one of Saambolin's most notorious Jinnjirri actors, religious fanatics, and drug addicts—had overdosed at the Kaleidicopia last fall. Gadorian represented the conservative constituency of Speakinghast. He disliked anything and anyone who introduced disorder into his tidy municipality. Out of deference to his friend Rowenaster, Gadorian had
tolerated the presence of the Kaleidicopia in the Jinnjirri Quarter of the city just barely. For years, the guildmaster had been trying to convince Rowen to move into a more respectable section of town. The professor had always steadfastly refused to entertain the notion of leaving the Kaleidicopia Boarding House. Although Rowenaster had explained his reasons for wishing to stay right where he was on countless occasions, the guildmaster never seemed to accept those reasons—much less understand them. Now that the Kaleidicopia had been linked to Cobeth's name, Rowen was certain it was a matter of time before the guildmaster discovered that Cobeth had actually been a five-year resident of the «K.» When that tidbit got out, the «K» would close for sure. In the guildmaster's mind, Cobeth represented everything Gadorian was trying to eradicate from Speakinghast. If for one moment Gadorian thought that the residents of the Kaleidicopia had supported or even engaged in Cobeth's decadence—well, best not to think about it, Rowenaster told himself. Smiling pleasantly at the guild-master, Professor Rowenaster said, «Ask away, Gad. We've no secrets here in this classroom.»
Gadorian leaned back in his chair, his expression self-satisfied. Pointing to the Jinnjirri in Rowen's classroom, Gadorian asked, «How can a nice, tenured professor like yourself live with shifts?» There was dead silence.
The Jinnjirri present had been sitting with their hair exposed—'unhatted» as it was called in Mnemlith. Now every Jinnjirri head in the room turned an outraged red. Out of respect to Rowenaster, not to Gadorian, who outranked the professor by a great deal, the Jinn in Rowen's class had remained seated when Gadorian entered the room. Now they got to their feet. Giving Rowen furious scowls, the Jinnjirri students walked out, their hair fluctuating scarlet and black. Rowenaster watched them go, his expression stunned. He whirled on the guildmaster. «How could you do that, Gad? This is my classroom. This is a safe place for them to come. I don't allow that kind of bigotry here. Damn you!» he added, his eyes blazing with indignation. «I think the question was quite fair,» said Gadorian. The guildmaster paused, listening to the city bells as they tolled the noon hour. Class was over. «You interested in lunch?» he asked as the remaining students filed out quickly, all of them thankful to be escaping the bad feeling in Rowen's classroom. Rowenaster glared at Gadorian. «You interested in the Jinnjirri?» Gadorian chuckled. «Only in election years.» «Then I'm not interested in lunch. Furthermore, we've been through this over and over. Now, get this once and for all: I like living at the Kaleidicopia!» Gadorian raised an eyebrow. He got to his feet slowly. «Look, Rowen—it was an honest question. To a chauvinistic Saam like me, the way you live looks pretty strange. And anyway, you don't need shifts in your class. What good is a classical education going to do any of them? They'll just waste the space. Better the seat should be taken by someone with a future.» «The Greatkin Survey course is for everyone,» said Rowenaster icily. «The Greatkin created all the draws, including the Jinnjirri.» Gadorian snorted, his expression amused. «Surely you don't believe that. Not really.» Rowenaster refused to comment. Without a word, he turned away from Guildmaster Gadorian. Rowen walked up the stairs leading out of the lecture hall and slammed the door behind him.
Gadorian shook his head. «Shit if he isn't starting to act like a shift. Passion for passion's sake.» He grunted. «Well, I hate surprises. Especially among my own draw.» While Rowenaster walked angrily toward the Jinnjirri Quarter of Speakinghast, intent upon grabbing a quick bite of lunch at home, tricksterish trouble was afoot at the «K.» The Kaleidicopia Boarding House, or the «K» as it was affectionately called by the nine people who lived there, was an almost legal establishment located deep in the bohemian, renegade section of the city: the Jinnjirri Quarter. As Guildmaster Gadorian
had just pointed out, living in such a place was an odd choice for a tenured, fastidious, Saambolin professor of independent means. Usually students
populated this low-rent, flamboyant district—the majority of them Jinnjirri. Like the rest of his housemates, Rowenaster resided at the «K» for reasons that few in Speakinghast would understand. Rowenaster was one of a
select circle of nine Contraries, one of Greatkin Rimble's Own. This did not mean that he was biologically related to Trickster, only that he had proved to have a «certain capacity.» Rowen was not exactly sure just what this «certain capacity» was. He suspected it might have to do with a kind of flexibility of mind and contrariness of spirit. For some reason both of these qualities had endeared him to Greatkin Rimble—so said Kelandris. «Whatever that means,» muttered the professor under his breath as he walked up the stairs leading to the fuchsia-colored front door to the Kaleidicopia Boarding House. It was a loud shade of pink, one well suited to the Jinnjirri neighborhood in which the house was located; keeping up with the neighbors was a creative, demanding task in this quarter of town. Rowenaster opened the front door and walked in. The sound of bedlam met his ears. Rowenaster sighed, looking toward the large spiral staircase that led to the upper two floors of the house. Bedlam was a normal occurrence at the «K.» Even so, thought the professor, someone screaming in terror on the second floor was a little out of the ordinary. He decided to investigate. Apparently three other members of the Kaleidicopia decided to do the same thing. Zendrak, dressed in green as usual, tore up the stairs. Podiddley, an Asilliwir pickpocket, and Kelandris, dressed in yellow, followed Zendrak swiftly. Rowenaster took the stairs at a slower pace. When the elderly man reached the second floor, he heard frantic crying coming out of Yafatah's room. Yafatah was black-haired like all of her draw and possessed a compelling voice that was both husky and pure. At the moment, however, her voice was cracking with fear and whimpers. Frowning, Rowenaster entered her room. He was met with the unexpected sight of Zendrak pulling stinging wasps out of Yafatah's long dark hair. It seemed that the sixteen-year-old had been washing the outside windowpanes of her second-storey bedroom when she accidentally jostled a nest of yellow jackets under the eave of the house. Yafatah had nearly fallen off the roof when the wasps swarmed her. She had stumbled back through the open, circular window of her room and shut it as best she could, crushing a few of the marauding insects on the windowsill as she did so. Now she struggled against
