“Me, I’m Tjepa. Mam’s Perolat.”

  “Well, Tjepa-si, I thank you.”

  Grinning again, he sketched a bow, pleased with her and with himself.

  “How come you’re the only one come to talk to me, Tjepa-si? Linfy’s getting a good take, so they must have liked us.”

  “You sure don’t know much.”

  “Tjepa, my friend, I have been here not so very long.”

  He jerked a thumb at the darkening sky. “Is it really so differnt up there?”

  “All kinds of differnt.”

  He eyed her skeptically. “I bet you don’t really know. I bet you run away from home to here and don’t know nothing about nothing.”

  “Hanh. Maybe you would, young Tjepa, and maybe you’d lose. Different kinds, different times. I’m a lot older’n I look to you. So why no talking?”

  “Leavin it to me.”

  She raised her brows but said nothing as she opened the pouch and let Linfyar scoop the coins into it. After she tied the pouch back to the belt, she said, “Tjepa, this is Linfyar, my friend. Linfy, this is Tjepa. He says his mam can maybe rent us a room.”

  Tjepa stared at Linfyar, fascinated. “You got no eyes,” he said. “How do you know where you’re going?”

  “Ears,” Linfyar said and wriggled his. He pursed his lips and pulsed a rapid series of inaudible whistles at Tjepa. Shadith watched, amused. Showing off, she thought. Wonder what other senses he’s using and not saying. “You ‘bout this much taller’n me”—he measured off about an inch between thumb and forefinger—“and you’re wearing shorts and a shirt made outta some slippery stuff, don’t know what, and you got nothing on your feet and you got a gap in your front teeth that shows when you talk.”

  “Hey wild, Linfy, how you do that?”

  Shadith tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey yourself, Tjepa-si. Let’s go. It’s getting dark and we’re plenty hungry.”

  He nodded and started off one of the side spaces, a snake crawl that wriggled even deeper into the city, with Linfyar strutting beside him, forgetting his fatigue as he played his tricks for his new acquaintance, bouncing silent whistles off buildings around them or folk walking along, then describing what he learned. Shadith followed the two boys, amused by their antics and interest in each other. She worried briefly about Linfyar’s chatter, wondering if he’d say too much about why they were here, but he’d learned survival in a hard school; playing a role was as natural to him as breathing. He was enjoying himself without giving Tjepa anything but the story they’d worked out. She relaxed and drifted along, the edges melting about her now and then but only small almost homey bits of disorientation. Rather pleasant, a floating bouncy feeling. She came out of it with something like regret. A few turns later she saw Linfy shiver and stop walking. Tjepa quieted, led Linfyar on until he recovered, then plunged again into animated exchange.

  Tjepa led them to a large rambling inn built close to the city wall, a ragged circle of small independent apartments joined by a raised wooden walk with a vaulted roof resting on irregular arches that looked grown in place rather than shaped by any hand. Winding in and around the arches and over the roofs of the apartment, luxuriant vines put out sprays of crimson or saffron blooms or elaborate lacy leaves. The apartment-cabins had tall thin windows with dark glass set in graceful lead tracery; they were built of woods that had weathered to a silver gray, roofed with rough-cut shingles of the same silken gray. The inn had a graceful unstudied ease; it sang to her of folk who liked to touch and stroke, who had an eye for form and line, who had an aversion for symmetry and repeating themselves, liking rather to take a theme through subtly differing variations. It sang to her, We are a proud and independent folk, we prize harmony with earth and air and each other. She felt comfortable here; as she followed Tjepa through one of the wider arches, she thought, I’m coming back here someday when I’ve got nothing on my mind but enjoying myself.

  Inside the ring of cabins and the covered walks there were neat kitchen gardens where vegetables and herbs native to this world mixed with those from the home world, both sorts growing with a vigor that reinforced the feeling of kinship with earth and green growing things. She followed Tjepa and Linfyar along the spoke-walk to the tower in the center. Roughly circular, it looked like the lopped-off trunk of one of the giant Kekar-Otar trees, rising three times as high as the cabins, the same kind of long narrow windows scattered in a haphazard way that made it difficult to tell how the inside was arranged, but suggested it followed the freeform flow of the covered walk. I do like this place, she thought once again, and smiled at Tjepa’s back.

  Tjepa’s mother, Perolat, was a tall lanky woman who looked like a sister of the Avosinger in the meditative trance in one of the outer k’saha, as much a kinship of spirit as it was of form. She’d seen a number of men and women with that calm competent look, that detachment, that lack of hurry, seen them sitting at tables over glasses of wine, seen them ambling along talking quietly together, seen them in the crowd that gathered to listen to her. Perolat sat stretched out in a comfortable chair with a glass of wine at her elbow, watching pot lids bumping on the stove, wreathed in smells that started Shadith’s mouth watering and her stomach cramping, reminding her how hungry she was. Linfyar whistled a lilting trill full of happy anticipation, but minded his manners and waited for Perolat to speak.

  Perolat’s left leg was propped on a stool, metal and wood and circuitry below her knee. She wore shorts and shirt like her son, making no effort to conceal the prosthesis, She looked lazy and contented and wholly unsurprised to see her son dragging strangers into her kitchen. She sat up, smiled a welcome, raised heavy pepper-and-salt eyebrows.

  “Mam, this is Shadith and Linfyar. They new in Dusta and needing a place to say. She says call her Shadow. She play f-i-i-ine music.”

  Perolat pushed a strand of soft gray hair off her face. “Musician?”

  Shadith nodded, turned so Perolat could see the harp case lashed to the pack.

  “New here.”

  “Uh-huh. This morning.”

  “No ships down today.”

  Shadith smiled. “How interesting.”

  “Right. Your business. Hmm. Some rules we have here. I don’t know how you pay your way, girl, and don’t get shook by what I say. You a thief, that’s all right long as you touch nothing in the bebamp’n. That’s us here outside the walls. Authority and cathedral’s fair game. Out here I don’t care if you see sweetamber heaped high, you don’t touch. Not saying you are a thief, you understand, but seems to me it takes more’n a few songs to buy passage even on a smuggler’s ship, and you don’t look old enough, or—forgive me—lush enough to whore your way here, though there are some clowns who like ‘em young. Hmm. You plan to labor horizontal, do it outside the bebamp’n, don’t mess in your nest. No offense meant.”

  “None taken. How much for a roof and meals?”

  “Five piah silver the nineday, food extra.”

  Shadith frowned, then nodded; should have enough from the collection to handle that. “I’ll take it a nineday at a time, if that’s all right.” She sniffed and smiled. “And supper when it’s ready.”

  “Good enough. Tjee, take your friends over to Gourd.” She turned to Shadith. “I named them for local plants. Supper’s ten piah copper, pay when you get back here. You can give Tjee the rent once you get settled in. Supper will be ready in a half hour; come back here, I’ll show you where we eat.”

  Tjepa led them away from the kitchen along a covered spoke. “Mam was the best amberminer on Avosing before she stepped into a senget nest and got stung so bad. Me, when I’m old enough, I’m gonna be better.”

  “Your mam, she had to quit because of her leg?”

  “The leg she don’t have, uh-huh. There some baad burks out there just waiting for you if you holdin amber. Got no nose, them, forest don’t like ‘em, they hang around the outside waitin for miners to come by. You got to be fast and tough for findin the lodes, then you got to be faster and tougher to get th’ amber back. And the forest got to like you and you got to have a nose to find it in the first place.”

  “The amberjacks, they don’t bother you here?”

  “Better not.” He waved a hand. “This part o’ the bebamp’n, it’s all miners and their fam’lies. Ol’ jack he down to bones ‘fore he get more’n two steps, and he know it. Like Mam said, what folk do outside is their business, here’s home.” He stopped before a cabin, slapped his hand against a metal plate set into the door. It slid swiftly, silently into the wall. Inside, lights came on. He crossed the room, stopped by metal panels etched and stained into a pleasant abstract of twisty vines, touched a sensor in one corner; one panel slid aside, uncovering a bank of sensor squares and a small viewscreen with a silver-blue shimmer. He ran a sequence on the squares, looked over his shoulder. “Shadow, you and Linfy put your hands flat on here, then it’s you who can make things work. Door too.” He waited until Shadith guided Linfyar’s hands to the screen, then put her own there, then he said, “All right, you need anything else?”

  Shadith looked around. A comfortable room, all earth colors, broad comfortable chairs, small tables, pleasant indirect lighting; a welcoming room and more for the money than she’d expected. She touched the border of the console. Almost a gift. I wonder why. She lifted her head, startled, as she felt a familiar tickling nudge from the presence in the forest. Busy old ghost, aren’t you? She clicked her nail against the metal. “This isn’t Pajungg make.”

  “For sure no. Mam got this stuff off a smuggler.”

  “Should you be talking like that to strangers?”

  “Ahh, you’re a right ‘un. Mam knows.”

  “Hmmm. What will Linfy’s whistles to do this equipment? He needs to find his way around but we can’t afford to pay for replacements.”

  Tjepa frowned, shook his head. “Don’t know; maybe he better hold off till I ask Mam.” He scowled at the screen. “I can work it, that’s about all. Mam wants to send me to school offworld so I can learn stuff like that.” He wrinkled his nose, shoved his hands into his pockets. “I don’t need to know all that brakka to mine amber.”

  “Maybe your mam doesn’t want you losing a piece of your leg like her.”

  “Hunh, Mam don’t worry about brakka like that; she just don’t want to pay outsiders if she don’t have to.”

  “See, Shadow”—Linfy’s ears were flicking about, he was almost bouncing in place—“school’s a waste of time for Tjee. He knows what he wants. Me too.”

  “Hunh, you! What do you know? Tjepa-si, ask your mam about up to ninety thousand per. About there. And before you go …” She settled herself in the nearest chair, pulled up a table. She scooped a handful of coins from her belt pouch, spread them on the table so she could get a look at them. Copper and silver, no gold. Octagonal coins with milled edges.

  Keeping his hands pushed down in his pockets Tjepa sauntered across to the table. “Hey, you did good, Shadow, that’s not even half, is it?”

  “No.”

  He glanced at her, turned very serious. “That big ‘un, that’s a ten-piah silver. Musta been a miner—more’n some folk make a whole week. The little silver ones, they’re piahs, one silver each. You give me five o’ those, you’re set. Copper’s same as silver. Big ‘uns are ten-piah coppers, little ‘uns are one-piahs. One hundred copper piahs make a silver.”

  She slid five of the silver piahs off the table into her hand, held them out. “Thanks, Tjee.”

  “‘S nothin, Shadow.” He turned to go, turned back. “You think you could teach me, maybe a little bit, get me started like, playin something like … like your harp?” He cleared his throat. “I can pay. A little. I get an allowance, earn me a copper or two sometimes runnin for folk.”

  She heard the wistful longing he was trying to suppress and couldn’t withstand its appeal. “A little maybe, but Linfy and me we don’t stay anywhere very long. It wouldn’t be much. Maybe a copper a nineday?”

  He nodded. “I could go that.”

  “Well, if you find out you like it, maybe your mam could find you a real teacher. I have to tell you, Tjee, it’s work.”

  “‘S all right.” With a quick wave he trotted from the room.

  Linfyar was silent; she could feel him sulking. She ignored him, emptied the pouch on the table and began sorting the coins out, counting them and slipping them back into the pouch. Half hidden in a pile of coppers she saw a small dark blob shaped like a teardrop. She held it to the light and watched blue and green and red fires play in its heart. Flawed but still sweetamber, and worth more than all the coins she’d collected. She closed her fingers over the drop, warmed it, then brought it close to her nose and smelled for the first time the fugitive sweet bite of amberscent.

  “What’s that?” Sulks forgotten, Linfyar knelt beside her, nose twitching.

  “You cut deep enough, it’s why we’re here, Linfy.” She held out her hand, let him take the drop. “Why everyone’s here.”

  “Mmmmmh.” A long blissful sigh.

  “I see you like it.” She chuckled, finished counting the coins and sliding them back in the pouch. “Forty-three piahs silver, plus the five I gave Tjepa makes forty-eight. Two hundred six piahs copper. Not bad for an unadvertised improvised effort. Lovely friendly place, isn’t it, Linfy?”

  “Mmmm.”

  She looked around, frowning. He was sniffing at the amber, his nose nudging at the drop, his ears laid back flat against his head, his mouth drooping open. “Getting ‘high, are you?” She wrapped her hand around one thin wrist, doing nothing right then but letting him feel her hold. “This isn’t going to be a problem, is it, imp?”

  He said nothing, just shrugged and set the amber drop on the table. She took her hand away and got to her feet.

  “We’d better start over for supper. I’m hungry enough to eat my way there.”

  Linfyar yawned and stretched, then got to his feet. He stretched again, wiggled all over, patted his stomach. “Me too. And tired enough to fall asleep in the soup.” He giggled at the thought, mimed swimming motions as he followed her from the room.

  The dining area was a long narrow room next to the kitchen, one wall a shallow curve with tall windows that let in the starlight. The air was scrubbed and just cool enough to milk an extra touch of pleasure from the fragrant steaming dishes marching down the center of a long table made from a dark glowing wood hand-rubbed to a high gloss. A dozen others looked up as Perolat ushered them in, seven women, five men, all of them spirit-kin to Perolat. Step into my parlor, Shadith thought. Seems like the invisible government wants to look me over; is this luck or what?

  “This is Shadith called Shadow, maker of f-i-i-ine music according to my son, and her companion Linfyar,” Perolat said, then led them to vacant chairs at the table.

  The meal was a gentle but exhaustive inquisition. Perolat saw to the serving while the others probed Shadith’s past, her attitudes, her plans for her time on this world. The food was superb. Linfyar ate quickly, fastidiously, using his proximity senses (mind fingers that didn’t get greasy) to tell him where the food was, his nose to tell him what it was. A few questions came his way, but he handled them deftly enough; the miners concentrated on Shadith, courteous but persistent. She gave a thought now and then to blessing her misleading appearance, something that otherwise was growing into an irritating problem when she had to deal with strangers. Right now, though, it was helping her. The miners were satisfied with her answers, she could feel it, where they might have dug deeper if she’d looked older.

  RASHADA: (tall lanky woman with skin tanned so dark it was almost the color of the table, pale-yellow eyes, cool and assessing, not hostile, merely wary) That was a remarkable performance this afternoon. You are a gifted musician, young Shadith, but I think you were surprised by the effect you had on your listeners.

  SHADITH: (chewing on a bit of meat, swallowing, taking her time) Surprised isn’t quite the word. Astonished. Staggered. Flabbergasted. Same thing was happening to me.

  MARAH: (plumpish woman, shorter than the others, bland round face and deep-set eyes lost in shadows except for a glint now and then) Then that dream-effect is something new. It didn’t happen on other worlds you’ve visited?

  SHADITH: (tearing open a warm flaky roll and buttering it carefully, using the time to think about her answer) I have seen something similar, but not of my making. A long way from here. A long time ago.

  HALAMO: (tall lanky man, like Rashada’s twin, matching her feature for feature, the same cool yellow eyes, the same long rather bony fingers, , almost the same voice when he spoke) A long time ago? You look like you’ve barely hit puberty. No offense. How old are you, Shadith?

  SHADITH: Older than I look. Old enough I’ve touched a hundred worlds and brought away a little of each. Old enough to leave my home and people far behind. Actual years? I don’t really know. Easy for travelers to lose track.

  DIHANN: (a woman of stern and rather frightening beauty, exotic cheekbones and cat eyes, reddish tinge to her hair, wide full mouth, a way of moving, even sitting still and simply breathing, that made Shadith think of tigers and leopards lolling in the sun; her voice was deep and purring; she was the oldest of the women, lines in the velvety skin and the beginnings of collapse in her muscles, but she was still powerful and vividly attractive) Who are your people, ancient child, those folk you left behind?

  SHADITH: You wouldn’t know them. The Shallal of Shayalin, a world so poor and hard everyone left who could. My family is long dead. I escaped by chance, and I travel because one keeps on living and new places have new delights and there are always new places to see.

  RANGAR: (oldest of the men, bald, hazel eyes, wide thin-lipped mouth, deep lines at the corners, corrugated forehead, heavy eyebrows) Shayalin. I don’t know the name.