her left arm several times, she found no trace of the curious eyes that had materialized within her flesh. She did not remember falling asleep after she shook herself from her nightmares and sat before the window, but the eyes must have been part of them. Worried that the line between her dreams and her waking reality was beginning to blur, Myrmeen became anxious to fill her mind with other thoughts. She checked her dress to ensure that her gown would not offend her visitor's sensibilities and said, 'Come!'
The door opened and Lucius Cardoc stepped inside. She was not surprised. From the tentative nature of the knock, she had guessed that it would be him.
'Myrmeen,' he said as he entered and lowered his gaze in a form of respectful greeting. The mage looked exactly as he had the night before. If he had missed out on a night's sleep, the effects had not manifested.
She stepped away from the chair that she had been straddling and turned to face him. Her neck and back ached. She had fallen asleep in an awkward position, her head resting in the crook of her arms. Unconsciously, she raised her arms over her head and reached back to link her fingers behind her neck, stretching like a cat. Then she suddenly became aware of the sensuous image she was providing for the mage. Her thin shift had hardly been shocking, but it was not modest either. She was aware that the light from outside was serving to reveal her body's perfect lines.
Cardoc did not seem embarrassed in the least, and she found that she liked his reaction. He came to her from behind, raised the back of her shift, and said, 'Sit on the side of the bed.'
With a tentative smile, she did as he commanded. He delivered a powerful and soothing massage to the tense, knotted muscles in her back. His hands were stronger than she had anticipated. She resisted the urge to let him know exactly how pleasurable his touch was becoming as she bunched her hair in her hands and lifted it to give him clear access to her neck. He somehow knew exactly where to touch her and with how much pressure.
She appreciated that he said nothing of the scars lining her bare back.
'I have the information,' he said, a trace of amusement in his tone as he gently lowered her shift and backed away. 'Would you like a few moments to dress? I could wait downstairs with the others.'
She almost asked him to stay, then thought better of it. Her heart was racing as she turned to see him exit the room.
An hour later, the Harpers were on the street. They had retrieved their mounts from the stable master, who had charged them an inflated fee, a common occurrence in Calim-port, and rode through one of the designated routes set aside for intracity travel. They brought their supplies.
Reisz chose to ride beside Myrmeen, with Lucius taking point. A thought had weighed heavily on him for the last few weeks, since he had responded with the others to Myrmeen's summons and listened to her story. During the long ride to Calimport and through the trials that followed, there had been no appropriate moment to bring up his observation. Now, he felt, was as good a time as any.
'Myrmeen, you said that your mother first told you of the Night Parade to explain what happened to your stillborn sister. Isn't it possible that the monsters took her, too?'
She drew a deep breath, as if she had been stung by his words. 'Anything is possible,' she said evenly, betraying the fact that the thought had occurred to her, too.
Lucius called for the company to halt, and he pointed at the sight that had arrested his attention. They were close to the shipping lanes, traveling between endless rows of buildings that had been converted into warehouses. Ahead they could see the bay's sparkling, clear waters, along with nearly one hundred ships in the docks. Above one of the ships, like an angry black fist, rose a cloud of smoke. A small boat had been set on fire and was sinking into the waters.
The mage dismounted and led his sleek black horse to the others. Reisz took the animal's reins as Lucius offered to go ahead and learn what had happened. Myrmeen and Burke agreed. As they waited for him to return, she thought of Kra-cauer, the baby merchant who had been slain by the strange weapon charged by a form of magic that had unnerved Cardoc. She considered the possibility that the assassin had been close enough to hear the names Kracauer had given them. Having mentally traced the trajectory of the second blade, the one, presumably, meant for her throat, Myrmeen knew that, without Lucius's interference, the knife narrowly would have missed her.
The killing had been a warning.
Lucius came back and announced what Myrmeen had already guessed: The boat that had been sunk belonged to Ivan Nehlridge, the smuggler who frequently shuttled Kracauer's stolen freight from the city. Witnesses had seen him engulfed in flames, screaming for his life, as the boat had gone down.
'Martyn Johannas is the only one left,' Lucius said. 'What I learned about him was a bit more vague. That could work in our favor.'
'Perhaps,' Burke said as he ordered the company to follow the mage. They left the docks and cut across the dark heart of the city, the meaning of Cardoc's words apparent: Their only possible advantage depended on the quality of the information received by the killers, who were attempting to seal off Myrmeen's avenues of inquiry. If they had been given the same odd phrases as Cardoc to explain the whereabouts of Martyn Johannas, then the Harpers had a fair chance of getting to the man first.
The morning was a bitter memory by the time they arrived at the outskirts of the city's financial district. Guardsmen ordered them away from the busy streets. The Harpers put up their mounts at the first stable they spotted, which had been filled nearly to capacity. Myrmeen was doleful at the idea of leaving the mounts in the oppressively hot stables. Fortunately, the stalls they rented were the responsibility of a young stable boy who seemed to genuinely love and respect the magnificent animals left to his care. She gave him an extra coin for his troubles.
Before they left, the boy took her to a private room, where she changed into an elegant gold-and-white dress from her travel bag. When she emerged from the room, her hair was piled up in a regal style and held in a beautiful headdress. She wore white gloves that covered her forearms and ended above her elbows. Her shoulderless gown plunged in the front, revealing the creamy tops of her breasts, which had been thrust upward by a wire corset that chafed against her skin. Her bearing and style of walk had changed, too.
The Harpers had decided that they would draw far less attention if they posed as servants and bodyguards to a finely dressed lady. For Myrmeen, her companions' expressions at her emergence as a woman of wealth and privilege made it worth slipping out of her battle-worn leathers, mails, and thigh-high boots. Her only mistake in choosing this outfit had been her sandals, which revealed her calloused feet. Cardoc nodded at her approvingly, his gaze lingering perhaps a moment too long.
The group left the stable and walked for several blocks. They were surprised as they turned a corner and were suddenly swallowed up by a torrent of citizens. The people rushed blindly forward, heads down, their gazes carefully set to take in any obstacles at a glance without making eye contact with anyone. As Myrmeen had imagined, the passersby were dressed in the finest, most brightly colored gowns and business wear that the city's markets had to offer. Many people had entourages similar to Myrmeen's, and her group drew little attention, except for the occasional stare inspired by Myrmeen's hypnotic beauty. They had not traveled far before Myrmeen realized that Lucius had vanished into the crowd.
The buildings lining the financial district's long, central street had been designed with the care and expense usually devoted to fine palaces or halls of study. Myrmeen had seen it all before. The merchants were so touched by petty rivalry that each had attempted to make his or her establishment more spectacular to gaze upon than all the others. Their childish infighting, something that would not have been allowed in Arabel, had led to impressive spurts of towering architecture; several buildings had bridges suspended twenty feet above the ground, linking them with covered walkways. Others had statues of fierce lions or creatures of myth built into their walls. A few of the designers had opted for simple but elegant spires and ornately decorated, concave walls.
Cardoc had been told to look for 'the house of the griffon' and to 'regard kindly the temple of the sun.' Myrmeen found the trading house situated between a building guarded by a pair of stone griffons and a church made of glass. She and her party went inside the establishment and proceeded to the currency exchange bureau, where they found a tall man with slicked-back hair tied in a ponytail. He busily marked entries on a scroll and did not look up until Myrmeen set her gloved hands on either side of his parchment and leaned forward to whisper, 'Martyn Johannas?'
He looked up, stunned. 'Yes,' he said.
Myrmeen smiled. She had seen the expression before. At that moment, she was certain that he would have agreed to anything she proposed. Her entourage kept its distance, allowing her to delicately take a seat before the
