barefoot boy leaped upon a table, avoided the clumsy slashing of a short whip from a baker's girl, and popped round loaves of bread into twin sacks hanging at either hip. A crone threw sand into a merchant woman's face and slapped red cheeses into her own sacks, then jammed three more into the backpack of a rawboned girl alongside. A huge man, a giant, but blindfolded, was led by a elfin girl to a stall of hams and sausages. As the giant flailed blindly with a staff that made butchers jump out of the way, the girl filled pouches on his legs and back with stolen meats. A yellow-haired scoundrel whirled a weighted chain overhead, making corn merchants duck, so he could snare, one-handed, fat sacks of yellow meal that he stuffed down his shirt. Another man hurled jars full of something that, when the jars broke, stank so abominably that food sellers retreated retching. A pair of girls, twins with stiff topknots like Sunbright's, upended a table onto an old woman so they could snatch up flitches of bacon in a scrap of canvas.
There were more attacks and distractions, some of them magical, and Sunbright remembered that anyone born in the empire could enchant. A crone, obviously a hedge wizard, fanned her fingers to hurl what looked like water into the path of two carters, except they slipped as if on oil and couldn't rise. A girl with red pigtails held on to a fallen banner so the other end rose like a snake and enwrapped a burly butcher from behind. Elsewhere Sunbright saw clouds of purple and blue smoke, a spinning lightning bolt, a brace of phantom horses charging.
All this happened within seconds, hundreds of poor battling scores of merchants and robbing till their sacks were filled, while Sunbright stood stupefied at the spectacle.
Then the city guards rushed in, and the killing began. While the poor had just upset and driven back the merchants, the guards had no such qualms. The burly men and a few women charged into the ragged folk with silver clubs swinging. A club smacked the side of one man's head and caved it in, dropping him like a shot goose. Another club broke the wrist of a woman clutching a ham. As she dropped it, and bent to grab it with her good hand, a blow landed on her neck, driving her facedown onto the cobblestones, dead. A boy running down tables had his legs swept out from under him, was brutally kicked as he toppled to the ground in a tangle of skinny arms and legs. The guards could ply magic too. A crackling hand shocked a raider senseless, an indrawn breath sucked another off her feet, a glob of spittle darted unerringly to smack a thief in the eyes. Guards worked in pairs, two or four or six, watching each other's sides and backs, driving hard with heavy boots, shouldering the poor aside and down, smashing and breaking bones at will.
A gaggle of raiders stormed by Sunbright, who hadn't budged an inch in all this hurly-burly. They swept past like a wave around his waist, for he towered above most Neth. The twin girls flitting past flicked his elbows with their topknots. The lone barbarian was left to face six stampeding guards with bloody clubs, who would bull over anyone in their way.
That suited Sunbright.
It was gut reaction, not reason. If the poor needed food so desperately they must steal it, they deserved it. And the guards had no right to kill them for so necessary a crime. And these brutes enjoyed their work.
So Sunbright welcomed combat, a chance to strike back at the callous rulers of this city.
A barbarian shriek split the morning air to rise above the roar and stampede. Planting his big iron-ringed boots, Sunbright swept Harvester behind him with two hands, shouted again, 'Raaa-vens of Rennn-garth!'
Too late the guards realized this big man wouldn't flee. Two of them braked, almost falling. Two sheared to the side. Two, angrier than their comrades, drew their short swords to match their clubs.
They died first.
Harvester of Blood sliced the air, hissing as its glistening blade sheared through an ironwood club, slammed into the first guard's neck, and carried on to bat the club of the next man, who reeled in shock from the gout of blood that erupted into the sky, and from the thud of his partner's head at his feet. The sword edge cut the club deep enough that Sunbright's tug ripped it from the guard's hand. The soldier ducked and stabbed with his short sword, aiming for the barbarian's gut. But Sunbright had whipped his sword straight back, pommel high against his shoulder, and stabbed back. Longer arms and a longer blade scored. The guard was skewered above the breastbone by the terrible, hooked tip of razor steel. His own fetched-up club battered his chin, though by then he was already dead.
Chanting an ancient battle air, Sunbright hauled back his sword and whirled in a fast circle, though he shuffled without picking up his feet lest he trip or slip in blood. It was a good thing he instinctively guarded his back. A female guard was chopping at his kidneys.
Tilting Harvester down, he caught her sword on his steel with a frightful clang and screech. Dishing her thrust to one side, he flicked a quick chop at her chin. She hollered and flipped her head back, but not fast enough. Harvester cleft her chin from underneath, laid open her lips so bloody teeth gleamed, and knocked her onto her back.
Her partner, a square-jawed brute, tried an attack that almost worked. Reaching over his shoulder, he jerked loose his lobster-tail helmet and flung it at Sunbright's face, followed with a quick killing thrust to the groin. But the barbarian had fought too many battles to flinch. Still gripping Harvester in two hands, he snapped his wrists up to deflect the polished bowl with a clonk. At the same time, he leveled Harvester only slightly. The lunging guard ran his own belly onto Harvester's keen tip. As Sunbright spun to his right, the sword's barb ripped a furrow across the man's guts and liver.
Sunbright was still turning, still guarding his back, but four guards were dead and the other two gone. He was alone, temporarily, in a pile of bloody dead. Cowering merchants hunkered behind spilt tables while distant guards clubbed the wounded to death, for most of the poor had fled to the shadows whence they'd come. The food riot was over, and soon Sunbright would be the only one standing with a bloody sword amidst a hundred angry guards.
But not everyone had fled. The one-eyed woman-again Sunbright glimpsed that tantalizing white bauble at her throat-struggled to drag a yellow-haired man who'd fallen and broken his leg. The blind giant, hampered by his bulky loads of food, jabbered at the tiny girl, and groped for the fallen man. Guards spotting the quartet saw them and shouted to close in.
Instantly Sunbright was among them, sheathing Harvester, butting the giant aside, grabbing up the broken- legged man, and pitching him over his shoulder. By the time he'd balanced the man, the one-eyed woman was waving a glittering gold hand at them from yards away. 'Run, slue-foot!'
Heavy boots sounded behind him. Hunkering forward under his burden and grabbing the giant's elbow, Sunbright dashed through a maze of upset stalls, rolling vegetables, and slippery fish. The one-eyed leader paused at a narrow alley between two brick walls and slapped her comrades inside while watching the onrushing guards. She spanked Sunbright through into semidarkness, then shoved his hams from behind to keep him moving.
But as he'd zipped past her, grappling to keep the injured man on his shoulder, Sunbright had glimpsed the white shininess at her throat and finally recognized it.
It was a knucklebone.
When Candlemas trudged back to his suite of rooms, thoroughly distraught by he knew not what, he found yet another calling card lying on a silver tray next to his canopied bed. This bore an A, a letter for once not so ornate as to be misread. The simple, neat monogram made him already like the bearer. But who 'A' was he didn't know.
A maid finally told him that the monogram belonged to one Lady Aquesita, and that her footmen had requested Candlemas visit, when he had the time. Now he had only exhaustion from a day of reading, and his nerve-racking interview with Lady Polaris. Kicking off his sandals, he climbed into bed and tried to forget everything.
But the morning was bright, a hot bath and splendid breakfast brought him alive, and wearing yet another new robe, this one red with brown trim, he summoned a page girl to lead him to Lady Aquesita, whoever she might be.
It turned out she lived in one of Karsus's mansions. He had many, for he was the most important man in the empire, no matter what the other nobles might want to believe. It was a good mile walk down stairs and up ramps, out one door and across expanses of flagstones and gardens and lofty balconies until he arrived at Lady Aquesita's 'chambers', which were, in fact, a whole separate mansion. Along the way Candlemas wondered what she wanted. Everyone in this city, he'd concluded, wanted something. Already he'd been approached by many folk currying favor with 'Karsus's special friend.' Aquesita, he supposed, would prove no different.
Yet when the page led him down a gravel path to the lady's mansion, Candlemas was impressed by its neat
