She saw me and came over to our table. She sat down and took my hand. It was a gesture that was so reminiscent of the easy way in which Yaendrid would hold my hand that I almost recoiled. I sat, looking at her brown, big-knuckled fingers. Her nails were wide and oval shaped, and almost white, as if they exerted a tremendous pressure on the skin beneath them.

  “Would you like something to eat or drink?” I asked her, in keeping with the custom of the house.

  “Not now,” she said. “Maybe later. You are troubled.”

  I looked up into her sad eyes. They had sunk deeper into her face since I’d seen her last. A thin black hair sprouted from her nose. “The city is lawless,” I said softly.

  “And you serve a law.”

  “I am losing my purpose.”

  “And you came here to find it?”

  “I seek the Dreamer’s Court.”

  She didn’t recoil, but her hand tensed in my grasp. “Do you not know that life is a journey along meandering paths?”

  “I find I know less about life the longer I live it.”

  That brought a smile of recognition to her lips. “You set out along a certain path long ago. Do you think that it has now wandered close to the city’s most secret path?”

  “I do, Yahtem Ahneth. It has to. The path that I am on is now narrow and choked with thorns.”

  “The hero’s path often is.”

  I snorted. “I am no hero. I am a fool. I was a fool when I set out on this path, all those years ago.”

  “You were a boy.”

  “There are boys who are wise.”

  “You have always been kind.”

  “Kindness will not help me now.”

  Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “You are being dishonest, Haendil the Hero. You seek the Dreamer’s Court because you think it is kind. Or kinder than lawlessness. But it isn’t kind, Captain. You should know by now that the law is cruel.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. It’s meant to protect people.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” she agreed, and then changed my meaning. “It doesn’t have to exist. In this house, there is no law. Only custom.”

  I glanced at Vaenahma. They were watching my face with a care and attention that disturbed me. There was a strange regret in their eyes. “Why did you call on us, when the Sot killed your grandson?”

  “Who should I have called on?”

  “The Dreamer’s Court, Yahtem Ahneth. You could have called them.”

  “I did not want Harloen killed in secret. I wanted him killed with the city watching.”

  “You wanted law, not custom.”

  She looked down. “Yes.”

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  “If it becomes customary for people to murder each other in the streets, I want the law as well.”

  Her lips twitched again. “Is murder becoming the custom of the land? Have we fallen so far, so quickly?”

  I looked at Vaenahma. “It is.”

  “And if murder is committed by hanging a man with a burlap sack over his head? That is justice?”

  “At least it’s been thought about. At least people have deliberated over it.”

  “They have. But it makes me sad, Haendil. It makes me very sad.”

  I let that rest for a moment. Then I said, “It makes me sad, too.”

  She raised her eyes and looked at Vaenahma. “I will have some cider now,” she said. “It is in a cauldron over the kitchen fire. And there are roasted nuts on the sideboard.”

  They were dismissed. They didn’t like it, but they stood anyway, adjusting their sword belt and smoothing down their robes. When they were gone, Yahtem Ahneth looked into my eyes.

  “Who do you want to bring before the judgement of the court?”

  “The father of a girl named Uesayna. She lives in the House of Song. Her father is one of the White Cats, and has just returned to the city.”

  “Does he have a name, this father?”

  “He must, but I don’t know it, yet.”

  “And what are his crimes?”

  “You know why women go to live in the House of Song.”

  She sighed. “Yes. And he is a bandit.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where can he be found?”

  “He has been prowling around the House, harassing the women there. Him and his friends.”

  She nodded. She released my hand and reached out and scratched a symbol in the soft wood of the table. It showed white against the glaze of moss. “Look for this marking. Someone will make it somewhere where you can see it. Return here once you spot it.”

  I nodded. “I would like to be there. When the court passes judgement.”

  She shook her head. “You are not an initiate.”

  “I would like to become one.”

  She gave me a long, searching look. “You may be asked to do things that you disagree with. Things that hurt your sense of justice.”

  I gave a little laugh. “I am already asked to do things I disagree with. I am a guardsman.”

  “Yes,” she said. “A guardsman in the palace. Yet you are always in the street. You and Gahmbo are much the same.”

  Gahmbo was my predecessor, Captain of the Guard of the Courtly Palaces when I was coming up. “He was a far better man than I was,” I said.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  She took my hand in both of hers and held it for a moment, palm upward, studying it. She began to run a finger along it. It sent a shiver up my spine. “Do you not know that we see ourselves best in the people we hate? Who do you hate, Haendil?”

  I thought about it. I would have liked to say that I hated no one. But I knew my answer. “Pertrahn, I suppose,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.

  “Yes. And Gahmbo did, too. He saw himself in that boy. Clever and observant without being kind. Gahmbo worked hard at being kind. It wasn’t natural to him. He chose you because you are kind. You always have been.”

  “Perhaps. But I’m also blind, Yahtem Ahneth. I don’t notice things as I should. I am easily tricked.”

  She raised my palm and kissed the center of it. “Don’t trade kindness for wit, Haendil. It is a bad bargain.”

  I looked down at the symbol scratched in the table. “You will ask them? You will ask them to initiate me?”

  She sighed. “I will, if it is your wish. But my heart will be heavy when I ask.” Vaenahma was returning to the table, but she took the cup of cider and bowl of nuts from him before he could put them down. She gave me a final glance. “Look for the sign,” she said.

  As we were leaving the house Vaenahma stopped and stared into a bank of ferns, then bent down and plucked something from among the fronds. It was a small enamel shiekahdodo flower, of the type that sympathizers with the Prince of Kemestmahlae’s cause had worn when Vaenahma first came to the city. The shiekahdodo flower, that hid the hunting fly. Vaenahma’s lips twisted into a thin, wry smile. Then they reached out and pinned the flower to my robes. I let them, having decided to embrace all of the symbols of all of the world’s lost causes.