He could be gone a while. They’d chosen to sleep far away from water because at this time of year the suckmites tormented anyone foolish enough to bed down near a stream.

  The flames ignited. Azure rose and added larger wood. She opened a pack and rooted around for one of their sacks of pearl grit, as they had taken to calling the local porridge grain. She considered the flavor inferior to oats or wheat but the stuff was equally sustaining and certainly easier to prepare. One did not have to smash the kernels with a rolling pin nor soak the potful ahead of time to make them cook as quickly as travellers needed their breakfast to cook.

  Her fingers brushed silk. The carpet was folded away in the pack. The enchantment gave it an unnatural sheen, as if it were lit from inside the threads.

  They could climb on it this very morning and be on their way home. And would, if she had her way.

  But she had been outvoted.

  In all the thirteen years since Azure and Coil had become creatures of the road, they had been comrades of equal standing. On the occasions when they had disagreed on what course to take, her opinion mattered as much as his, and his as much as hers. But now they were a trio.

  Returning home was their intended final use of the carpet. But it had enough magic left for two trips. Coil wanted the penultimate journey had to be to the place he had intended them to go last time. He wanted the help of the Eleven Gods. And so they had remained for months on the world of the gentle sun, in search of the information they needed. It wouldn’t do to simply tell the carpet, “Take us to where the gods are now.” Zephyr had explained the carpet would not know where that was unless they supplied it with that knowledge.

  Azure didn’t want anything to do with the gods. Not after their encounter with Schrae. The legends all agreed that Schrae was the worst, but they said some frightening things about the others. Azure wanted to stay as far away as possible from all of them.

  Outvoted.

  She snuffed out what was left of the kindling, leaving a glowing bed of coals on which Coil could set the pot when he returned.

  “Good morning.” The speaker was Zephyr.

  “Is it?” Azure responded.

  “You know it is,” Zephyr said. She rose, blanket wrapped around herself. She nodded in the direction they were headed. The dawn was just starting to reveal a broad, pleasant valley full of farmlands, stone bridges, and hedgerow thickets. Azure could just make out the town in the far distance by the moth light in its tower. In another few minutes the tile rooftops would assume their daylight colors, a patchwork of hues from yellow to turquoise to the occasional vivid green. The denizens here seldom chose colors of nature for their buildings.

  “We’ll find our answer there,” Zephyr said. “I know we will.”

  The sorceress’s daughter moistened a washcloth with a splash from her flask and wiped the eyelash crustiness and dew tracks from her face. Then she began brushing her hair.

  Two hundred strokes or more, every morning. Azure knew if she did that to her own hair, in a few weeks she would end up as plucked as a chicken outside a farm wife’s kitchen porch.

  “You’re sure that’s the town?” Azure asked. “I thought there was something about a lake.”

  “No, the lake is beside the monastery. In the hills. Remember what he said?” And in the language of these lands she rattled off three sentences of the conversation they had overheard a month ago, two provinces away.

  Azure made out only half the words. She and Coil had always been good at picking up languages. As children they had heard a polyglot of tongues spoken by the visitors to the inn. Yet Zephyr had the advantage here. Most of the locals used a traders’ tongue based upon the speech of the Twelve Gods. Zephyr had been required by her mother to study the old scrolls. Half of those were written in that language.

  Azure could not bring herself to ask Zephyr to repeat the words at a slower pace.

  “This will be a good day,” Zephyr reiterated. “Soon we will know where the Eleven Gods are. And that will be the end of Schrae. It’s what you’ve strived for all these years. Why do you insist on all this worry?”

  The End of Schrae. There it was. The Eleven Gods had killed Schrae once. Why would they not do so again? If they did, Azure’s greatest desire would be fulfilled.

  Azure would cooperate with the plan. Nevertheless, she could not shake the feeling they should find some other way.

  ~o0o~

  Coil tried to engage Azure in small talk twice during the morning’s journey. Her replies were too terse to keep the conversation going. It would take more than small talk to cure her pensive mood.

  He, on the other hand, felt increasingly optimistic as they trudged along. After thirteen years of wandering, and months more upon a strange world, their goal was within striking distance.

  Before noon they skirted one last farmstead and found themselves standing directly across the river from the town.

  A stone barbican guarded the bridge landing, a vestige of the era when the denizens on this side were more bandits than dairymen and hay farmers. Peace had apparently been the rule lately. The portcullis was up and the lone, bored guard on the battlement simply waved them in.

  As soon as they crossed, the scene transformed. The air rang with the clang of hammers, the zimming of saws, the braying of drayage beasts. The aroma of roasting sausages and the odor of fermenting mash coursed down the avenue. People were out and about, going about their daily trades or seeing to errands or pausing to share gossip. Many displayed a great deal of skin. This was not a world where people had to take measures against sunburn.

  People nodded at them or even waved. The town was on the kingsroad. Travelers arrived on a daily basis.

  They did not need to ask for directions. They spotted their destination right where their informant had said it would be. Hanging from the tavern was a sign of three drunken pigs leaning against an oversized tankard of beer, passed out from a night of guzzling.

  Coil by now knew enough of the culture to understand the euphemistic meaning of the sign. “Three drunk pigs” was what you affectionately called a trio of fellows who had successfully completed an evening of whoring, drinking, and gambling.

  He glanced across the street and found what he expected—another large building, this one with a balcony all along its upper façade. At this hour the balcony was uninhabited, but Coil knew that would change as evening neared. He pictured women leaning over the railing, calling down to passersby to come in and spend some time.

  The proximity of the brothel mattered. It meant the tavernkeeper would be keen to hire entertainers whose talents could keep customers in their seats, buying ale and food and playing their games of tumble peg rather than spending their wages across the street.

  They found the owner of the Three Drunk Pigs at the back alley entrance supervising the unloading of fresh meat and greens for the kitchen. Judging by the stains on his apron, he was also the head cook for the day.

  As always, Zephyr was their spokesperson. She made them known with a soothing and fluent outpouring Coil could not have emulated until he had spent another six months learning the language.

  The tavernkeeper’s gaze lingered upon the shape of Azure’s lips, upon the dimple of Zephyr’s smile.

  “You two could make more across the street,” he told them.

  “We could,” Zephyr agreed. “But if we wanted to make money that way, we would have inquired there.”

  “I already have someone booked for tonight. A juggler and a dog. They’re very funny.”

  “So you’ve hired them before?”

  “I have.”

  “Then your customers have already seen them. They haven’t seen us. Here’s what we can do.”

  On cue, Coil lifted his sevenflute to his lips. Azure and Zephyr stood beside one another and sang the first stanza of The Ballad of the Tailor’s Cat. It was a song whose lyrics would have mystified the tavernkeeper if he’d understood them. There were no domesticated cats on this world. Azure and Zephyr sang it in the original Tamian. That was a tongue in which even curses and politician’s speeches sounded as though they had been crafted to fit a measure and tone. The tavernkeeper tried to hide how much he was enjoying the novelty of vocal renderings as pleasant to the ear as those that came from instruments, but he gave himself away by letting his mouth hang open to let the music filter in that way as well as through his ears.

  “You like?” asked Zephyr when they were done.

  He shrugged. “Can’t give more than I would’ve paid the juggler. A meal. A room. A third of the tip jar.”

  “Half of the tip jar,” Zephyr countered.

  The tavernkeeper paused, but Coil knew the battle was won. Half of what they’d bring in would be more than two-thirds of what the juggler would have earned, even if he’d brought three dogs and a monkey.

  “We’ll try it one night, and see,” the tavernkeeper said.

  Coil gave the man full credit for holding his own. Every word out of his mouth had been a maneuver to bargain down their price. But if he had possessed any genuine reluctance about hiring them, it had been overcome. That was usually the way it went when Zephyr was part of the negotiation.

  ~o0o~

  As suppertime neared and the common room began to fill, Azure finished the bath she had been longing for all week, and descended from their room.

  She found Coil was already up on the dais with his sevenflute. Zephyr was out among the tables, conversing with a brawny fellow. She was wearing the outfit she had spent all afternoon shopping for in the town: an embroidered, low-cut blouse, a pleated skirt, and an intricately worked belt of braided lacewheat hung with tassels of polished flintwood. Azure herself would never invest so much effort in crafting her own personal presentation, but she had no urge to mock Zephyr for doing so. The girl had been routinely left completely naked while she had been a prisoner of the Salt Pirates.

  Eventually the sorceress’s daughter joined them on the stage. She gave Coil and Azure a little nod to let them know the conversation with the brawny fellow had gone as they had hoped.

  They began with The Ballad of the Tailor’s Cat—the full thing, this time. As soon as it was done, the first copper bits and even a few silver links jingled their way into the tip bucket. Azure gave the biggest tipper a grand smile—and found it no struggle to do so. She had never had to sweat so little to earn money as in this realm. She was accustomed to dancing and acrobat routines and to serving as the risk-taker of Coil’s knife-throwing act. Here all she had to do is sing. The audience didn’t care that they didn’t know any of the words.

  Things went so well that when they took their break an hour later, the tavernkeeper happily filled Zephyr’s special request. Leaving his nephew to tend the bar, he descended into the cellar and came back with four chilled glasses of dark brew, thick with foam. He set the tray on the table near the stage that Coil, Azure, and Zephyr had temporarily claimed.

  “The barkeep’s reserve,” he declared. “You won’t find any better in this valley.”

  When they’d had a taste, all three of them raised their glasses in salute. Their host chuckled the whole way back to his station.

  Zephyr held up the fourth glass and beckoned the brawny fellow. He wasted no time joining them.

  “Do I keep my word or not?” Zephyr asked.

  “Wasn’t you I doubted,” he assured her. “Old Pembrohel there hoards this stuff worse than his brother ever did. It’s been a whole season since I’ve had a drop.” Their guest tilted the glass to his mouth carefully, making sure to spill none in his beard. Closing his eyes, he savored the drink on his tongue for three, four, five beats.

  The barkeep’s reserve was a black ale, tapped from the bottom of the vat. It was far more complex than the tavern’s everyday beer. The latter was decent enough, but Azure understood why their new companion had waited around for a chance to have a serving of the black.

  “This is Coil,” Zephyr said. “This is Azure.”

  The man raised his glass in their directions. “Murten,” he said.

  “You have strong-looking hands, Murten,” Azure said. Having rehearsed the question, she got the sentence out with only a slight stumble. “What’s your trade?”

  “Teamster.”

  “Really?” Zephyr interjected. “You didn’t mention that before. What kind of goods do you haul?”

  “Mostly foodstuffs,” he said. “I take supplies to the Curators. They don’t have any fields up in those hills. Barely any gardens. They’re always hiring me to fetch another load of this or that. The Blessed Scholar and her family have an affection for fresh honey; I put a barrel or two of that on the wagon nearly every time. One of the gods apparently liked honey. I think maybe they eat so much of it to make themselves closer to the gods. As if they aren’t already.”

  Orthuneiae, thought Azure. Orthuneiae was the god who liked honey. It was said the Eleven had taken along hives of bees when they departed. She’d seen beekeepers’ boxes across every realm they’d traversed these past months.

  Murten seemed perfectly willing to talk about himself. Good. They’d already known he was a supplier of the monastery, but the more new information they could glean, the better.

  “We came all this way partly to speak to the Curators,” Zephyr said. “But we were too late for Godsday. Now we have to wait eleven months until the next one.”

  “I’m in the same wagon,” Murten said. “It’s the only time anyone like us ever sees the Viewers, and only they can talk to the gods. I’ve been to the keep sixty times or more, and it’s only the pantry stewards and warehousemen I get to speak with.”

  “Not quite the same wagon,” Zephyr pointed out. “You didn’t have to journey for months to get this close.”

  “True. You have my sympathy about that.”

  At that point, the subject of the gods and the Curators was dropped. They couldn’t ask too many questions or Murten would begin to wonder why they were so obsessed with the topic. Zephyr went on to ply him with random small talk. He was around for most of the evening and returned as they were wrapping up their set. He was obviously full with the hope of any healthy young man. He took it in stride, though, when Zephyr sent him off with, “We’ve just met. Talk to me tomorrow. I have to see how dedicated you are.”

  ~o0o~

  As they climbed the stairs back to their room, Coil was brimming with cheer. Ideally they had wanted to find a man who would to smuggle them into the monastery. Murten seemed too honest and simple to enlist that way, but they could still make use of him. The conversation had confirmed the monastery was nearby, and Murten would soon visit it. Following him unseen might be a challenge, but it wouldn’t be the first time he and Azure had done such a thing.

  He was in such a fine mood his caution was as low as it ever went. Entering their room with the women right behind, he headed across the darkened chamber with the intention of lighting the candle on the sideboard. He barely sensed anything wrong before the net landed over him. Men tackled the three of them. All too soon they were tied up.

  They had been seized by half a dozen strongmen in dark clothing. Moments later in walked an armored figure. His livery bore the emblem Coil knew was that of the Curators. Murten was with him.

  “That’s them,” Murten said.

  Too simple a man? Apparently not simple enough.

  The three of them were taken out to the alley and locked into a caged wagon. A tarp was fastened over the cage.

  Coil expected a short trip. Just to jail. But it went on and on until finally the wagon tilted this way and that and bumped over stones. They had entered the hills.

  Zephyr wormed nearer to him. “You don’t suppose they...?”

  He grunted his astonishment.

  This was hardly the way they wanted to infiltrate the monastery, but when it came down to it, no other available method would have brought them within its walls as quickly.

  As the journey went on, he saw this might well have been the only practical way to enter the place. They passed through three waygates before dawn. Each time the guards and the wagon were allowed through only after the escort presented himself and said the right password—and it wasn’t the same password at each juncture. After dawn, they passed through four more.

  Finally, long after sunrise, they stopped. The tarp was pulled off. After he coped with the increase in brightness, Coil saw that the wagon was now parked by a loading platform of a stone fortress. A lake, created by a dam made of the durable false stone only the gods knew how to create, filled the view to the north. The fortress was built atop the cliff of its southern shore.

  They had come through a narrow defile. Had they used that road uninvited, archers would have made strawmen dummies of them.

  They were untied except for the bonds around their wrists, and marched into the lower levels to a large chamber with a rack and a table laden with whips, flaying tools, and fingernail pullers. A pallid excruciator stepped forward, clad in dungeon vestments that, while recently laundered, were heavily discolored by bloodstains.

  This was not promising, Coil decided.

  The excruciator frowned at them, as if he had expected to hear a whimper from the women. Clearly he didn’t know Azure and Zephyr.

  Into the room stepped a bald man in a particularly fine set of leather armor. “Your services will not be needed yet,” he told the excruciator. “They’re to be brought to the High Curator without delay.”

  Their treatment changed under the officer’s supervision. They were each briefly allowed to step into the privy and were given cups of water to drink. And then, oddly, their feet were washed.

  A large squad of men-at-arms took them upstairs. Every one of them was as finely attired as the officer. Nothing less would have suited, Coil realized, because the halls and galleries they passed through were sumptuously appointed. The marble floors were too fine to be traversed by boots tainted by road dust and horse dung. Instead the men wore soft slippers of sheepskin or meadow hare. Coil understood now why his feet and those of the women had been cleaned. He could also see why the monks were also called the Curators. All around were works of art of the highest order. Paintings. Sculptures. Furniture. The gods had moved on, but they were not quite done with this world, because it contained one of their museums.