Teri McLaren
thing, but I really want to help you on your way. I will buy this piece," she said generously. "I'll give you twenty kohli for it, and you'll never have a better offer, tell you why: it's really not worth even ten kohli-it's just that this particular totem comes from the time before the Wandering, and as you see, I collect things from that era." She waved her sharp nails around the room.
"Thank you, Riolla, but it's sort of special to me, too, even though it has no other value."
He swept up the totem from the table, his hand accidentally sending the delicate dagger sliding to the very edge of the little table, where it teetered on its hilt, blade pointing toward his host. Riolla followed the path of the knife and then slowly looked up at Cheyne, saying nothing. He stuffed the ganzite block into his pack and made ready to leave. Riolla's painted smile dropped an inch and her eyes hardened into glittering sapphires.
"Of course. That will be fifty kohli for the consultation, then. And leave my calling card here," she pronounced flatly.
After paying every antique dealer in the Mercanto, fifty-two kohli was all the money he had left. He reached into bis pack and gave it to her, noting that Riolla's adoption of caste law didn't seem to affect the exchange of money, took the paper she had drawn the symbols' meanings upon, and left Riolla Hifrata sitting frozen in artful rage at her table, her calling card pushed under the sticky blade of the jewelled knife. Before he had found the front door, the steward had stripped the cloth from the velvet chair, folded it, and laid it neatly atop the trash heap in back of the shop.
Just as the Arcanum's door slammed behind him, he heard the last bells ring three times, a few minutes apart, signaling the closing of first the Citadel's doors, then the Mercanto's, and finally the outer gates of the Barca. That meant two walls to try to scale if he didn't make it in time.
He rushed down the narrow, winding streets, trying to