Captain Slaedrin stayed in the shrine with the king, but he sent one of his lieutenants, Huehlscot of the Sleeve, to guard the entrance. This Huehlscot was whip thin and had a condition that caused her to cover much of her skin, regardless of the weather. I had never seen the strange scrolls of upraised flesh that wound its way over her body, but the guard is a gossipy place, and there were many who had claimed to have seen it and tried to describe it. I mostly ignored them. If Huehlscot wanted her privacy, who was I to try peeking beneath her robes? Her condition wasn’t contagious, or she would never have been allowed a place in the guard. And she was extremely dangerous with a spear and an ax.

  She coveted my seat by the little waterfall, and although she was only a lieutenant, some would say that her position in the King’s Guard allowed her to outrank me. I moved off, leaving both her and Martiveht to brood together. I wanted to go and investigate the tinker’s cart, but I didn’t have an excuse, as the “everyone else” I was supposed to be guarding were all quietly ensconced in the shrine. But I studied the cart from my vantage point.

  The slave boy had managed to persuade the elephant to leave the stream and had returned it to the paddock on the bank, where it squelched among the horse patties and began drinking again. Vaenahma was walking among the stalls, stalking the toughs and their grannies, although the toughs had mostly disappeared. I tried to catch their eye and gesture to the cart, but they seemed lost in thought. Yaendrid was drifting among the market stalls, handing out small purses in payment for their moving off so that the ground would be cleared for the king’s picnic. I wondered what she would do when she reached the abandoned tinker’s cart. I didn’t want her to reach it.

  Then Setrabohst emerged from the shrine and gave me an excuse to leave my post. “Well,” he said, ignoring Huehlscot and coming straight to me. “Enough of that for me. I stayed just long enough for my old grandad to drift past me and express his disappointment.”

  “You’ve been gone less than five minutes.”

  He gave an exaggerated shiver. “Five minutes among the dead is enough for any man.”

  He was playing at impiety. On other occasions he stayed in the Shrine for hours, as if he were sampling the extremes of devotion. This was his way. He would be very drunk one day and then very sober the next. Testing the limits of both drunkenness and sobriety. He was loved by the guard because he would join us when in a martial mood and spar with us and shoot arrows at a butt and sharpen everyone’s swords for them with an expert hand. Then he would disappear for months, and be found among the poets and singers. He was good at everything, but only one thing at a time. Still, this chameleon quality led everyone to love him, because one of the things he was good at was only appearing to you when he was truly interested in whatever you cared about. Both of my sons adored him, as he had spent days tallying figures and arguing through the intricacies of mathematics with Thaeto, and he had written a tune that made Nolio weep, and then given the tune away to anyone who wanted to set words to it. It was my good fortune that at that moment he was interested in being a guard, and his request for a drink was nothing more than a desire to show that he was one of us.

  I had a drink to give him, of course, but I didn’t remove the little flask from the sleeve of my inner robes. “My lord,” I said, stepping close to him, “I wonder if you would accompany me as I investigate that tinker’s cart.”

  It took him a moment to spot the cart in question. “The one by the bridge? Why does it bear investigation?”

  “Well, the ranger that I was telling the prince about was talking to the tinker, and now the tinker has disappeared.”

  He nodded and pursed his lips. “I see. And if I come with you, you can leave your post by the door, because you’ll have to protect my noble personage.”

  “Astutely observed, your grace.”

  “Astutely plotted, Captain. Yes, let’s go and take a look at the tinker’s fine wares.”

  It was odd for a tinker’s cart. It had the usual bric-a-brac scattered in a random way across the trays that littered the top. But it also had a little target on a pole. Round, with concentric rings and a bulls-eye. We studied it critically. Vaenahma came and joined us.

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  “Perhaps it is a child’s toy,” Setrabohst speculated. “A real arrow would obliterate half the target.”

  I grunted, and peered down along the pole that raised it above the cart. The pole was inserted through a hole that was hidden between two trays of trinkets. “Touch nothing,” I warned. I was playing an instinct. The hairs on the back of my neck were raised, and I didn’t know why.

  I walked around the cart. Its back was enclosed by two sliding doors. I squatted and pulled one back, very carefully. The end of the pole was connected to the handle of a hammer by a tight silken loop. The hammer was posed above a vial, and I recognized it immediately.

  A few years back the alchemists in Basokume discovered that a type of sea sand would explode when it was mixed with the pulverized remains of a type of stone that is only found in the World’s Teeth. They designed glass vials that have two compartments, separated by a glass wall, like a stoppered hourglass. The yellowish sand sits in one compartment. The slate gray dust sits in another. They sold these little vials as an entertainment, and for half a year they were all the rage in Rahasabahst. Children would throw them down in the street and they would explode. Not a big explosion. Just enough to startle horses and elephants and dignified matrons and slave girls who were carrying soup tureens. We spent all of our time running about, trying to arrest the purveyors of such toys, for the king banned them almost immediately. We were only partially successful. But the fad faded away, until one rarely heard a bang and screech when making one’s rounds.

  This vial was much bigger than the children’s playthings of the past. “A real arrow,” I said, “will obliterate this whole marketplace.”

  “What do you mean?” Setrabohst asked, and started to come around the cart to see.

  I heard the arrow rather than saw it, and I reached out and snatched the hammer just as the arrow hit the target and the pole snapped. For a moment I stayed frozen, my hand gripped around the hammer’s handle, its head mere inches from the hourglass. Then, very carefully, I pulled it away. I didn’t stand, but said, “My lord, take shelter.”

  And indeed, three more arrows thudded into the side of the tinker’s cart, as if they were aimed directly at the vial. Vaenahma’s voice said, “At least four archers. On the hills around us.”

  I ignored him, placed the hammer on the ground, and reached into the cart with a careful hand. I extracted the hourglass. Setrabohst had slipped around the cart to squat beside me. He whistled softly. We considered the bomb as Vaenahma shouted up towards the shrine.

  “I believe we could break it in the stream,” Setrabohst suggested.

  I nodded. “Upstream. Away from the market. And the elephant. I need a shield.”

  “I volunteer my services.”

  “Don’t be a fool. They’ll shoot you full of arrows.”

  He thought for a moment, then reached up and grabbed the largest tray from the top of the cart, tipping it and spilling its contents into the dirt. “It is good that I have kept my youthful figure,” he said, in reference to the narrowness of this makeshift shield.

  “Well, I haven’t,” I murmured. I bunched my robes around the vial, tensed my legs, then pushed off and sprinted forward, running towards the stream. There were hills all around us, and it was possible that there were archers to the north and to the south. I heard Setrabohst running behind me.

  A thump, a splintering sound, and he laughed. “Well, that was close. I got a splinter in my knuckle.” He wouldn’t admit that it had hurt him, and I supposed that he had subjected himself to the extremities of pain at some prior moment of his life, probably after a month of massages and fatty foods.

  I was in the stream, and running up it. Its bottom was full of shale and made for very uncertain footing. If I slipped, I would die. But I have run across many a shingled roof in my day while pursuing some miscreant, and my body still had a kind of agile buoyancy. On I ran, trying to decide when I was far enough from the market. I could hear the elephant trumpeting loudly behind me. I couldn’t hear Setrabohst, although the arrows were still falling. They struck the stream and sent up spumes of water and shale.

  I stepped forward and found myself plunging into a hidden pool. Water rushed up to soak my robes, and I was immersed. I drowned for a moment. But I was focused on my hands, which were tangled in the tightness of my soaked robes. I couldn’t free the vial, and it seemed like it would become a part of me, its threat stuck to me forever. Then it came loose and I pushed it forward with both hands, willing the water to take it. It drifted gently from me, and I held my eyes wide to watch it, and I swear to you that what I saw is true. A giant fish rose out of the depths of the pool and swallowed it. I felt its whiskers as it swam by me. It gave me a little bump with its tail, sending me back to the surface of the water, where I emerged in a great spume and began choking.

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