Tomorrow, Harbend had promised, but as with all things said in haste reality seldom agreed with such an easy solution.

Arthur had to agree upon postponing their departure indefinitely. It wasn't as if he really minded. He needed to be that honest to himself.

Verd, he was back in Verd again. Six months on the roads. No that wasn't true. Half of that time he'd spent on the Sea of Grass or as a prisoner somewhere. But now he was truly back in the magical capital of a nation that saw every user of magic shot on sight. Half a year ago he'd sworn that was about as depressing a thought as they came, but now he could taste the beautiful irony in it.

He took up rooms in Two Worlds, the very same he had lived in during his first stay in Verd. That said something about continuity.

This morning, his second after arriving here, saw him down the stairs, out on the shiny streets of the city and away, aiming his feet toward Ming Hjil de Verd.

He tentatively made his way between carts and wagons, crossed Erterius Street, stole a shortcut through Aran and Baran alleys which spat him out on Krante Boulevard. There he halted. Travelling with the caravan had made him forget that traffic moved in two directions within the confines of city walls.

Gaping at coaches, riders in their yellow uniforms with leather details in contrasting colours, young men and women dressed in jackets so short he could have sworn they never reached their navels and old people frowning at the youngsters, he stood. It would take more than a few days to get used to the frantic pace of a city labelled as the centre of the world. He corrected himself. A city who considered herself the centre of the world. In De Vhatic every place was a woman, a mother raising you, a woman loving you and an old crone lamenting your passing away.

And Verd, she had a mind of her own. Harbend had as much as admitted that. So much magic woven into her stones that she had grown sentient, or at least that was how rumours went.

Arthur didn't know about that, but De Vhatic was a poetic language, much more so than the Terran English he was used to from home. If the locals wanted to see their capital as a lover he wasn't going to complain. They certainly cared for her as if she was.

He kept to the pavement and passed spotlessly kept houses in white or red. Marble or granite, because Verd was a shining city of stone, beautiful where Belgera had been imposing, proud rather than strong and always with arms outstretched ready to embrace instead of the impenetrable grey fortification that was the capital in Braka.

Open. He was on his way to find out if a very special place was open. Twice he had entered a Taleweaver's Inn, and Verd should house one of her own. An outworlder taleweaver since early winter he planned to see that inn for himself, and conquer it.

While his life had seen more change the last year than the twenty preceding it one thing stayed constant. He conquered. Facing holo cams as a newscaster or addressing an audience as a taleweaver mattered little. He thrived on adoring listeners.

He walked on. Krante Boulevard emptied in Ming Hjil de Verd, and he allowed himself to pause and wait for the drifting morning fog to dissipate and disclose the wonders on the square. Statues. Statues made of walking glass, shifting in colour from blood red to brilliant blue as they wandered, posed and resumed their perpetual dance in a display of magecrafted arrogance and stunning artistry. Glass on white and glass on black as the man made apparitions walked the chequered square.

In it's centre a dozen warriors of glass were locked in eternal combat and less than halfway there another planted a banner in the ground, declaring victory for Keen in a war Arthur hadn't heard of.

Around them hawkers were setting up their carts and Arthur left the square before it turned into its daily bedlam of shouting peddlers and customers. He smiled as he continued down Dagd Boulevard. Less than a year earlier he'd stood frozen here, gawking at what the population took for granted, and now he was part of it all. A taleweaver. A walking wonder of this world in his own right.

He left Dagd Boulevard for Artists Street. Whistling the signature melody that had announced his shows for two decades he passed the theatres one by one. He didn't stop until he saw the sign he'd been watching for. The Taleweaver's Inn.

Stopping once more, to let a cart laden with dried fruit through, he exchanged insults with the driver and headed for the door.

It was an insignificant wooden door set slightly off centre in an equally anonymous stonewall. Almost as if someone had wanted people to fail finding their way here. But there was a sign. In the De Vhatic letters Arthur had never fully mastered, but this combination he knew by heart. Taleweaver's Inn. A door to the history of this world, to tales of wonder and to the Weave itself.

Late autumn, barely half a year ago he had entered through a door like this for the first time, and his life had forever changed. That night he became a taleweaver. After that he'd spun the Weave almost every evening, and he suspected legend already grew around his tales.

Hesitantly he stood facing the door. Watching it while horses, wagons and people on foot passed behind his back. Then he rapped the door hard and waited some more.

It eventually swung open and a man with a face like parchment challenged him. That face could have belonged to the guardian in The Roadhouse Taleweaver's Inn, or the one in Belgera, and as identical twins didn't come in threes Arthur simply accepted that even the guardians were part of the magic that seeped through each inn.

"What is your errand?" came the expected question.

"To Weave, but first I want to see this place," Arthur answered.

"To watch and Weave. Enter."

Arthur bent his head and crossed the threshold. People here were a full head shorter than he on average, and while furniture was simply too often uncomfortable, door frames, and in the worst of cases ceilings, were outright painful.

He passed through a corridor and opened the door at the other end. He didn't even bother to turn. The guardian would be gone only to appear well inside the inn. Arthur knew that by now. That this was the only way in didn't matter. One learned to take the impossible for granted on Otherworld.

Once inside he threw the stage a cursory glance and headed for the table a servant was already setting. She would return with a breakfast he'd only realize he'd longed for first when he put eyes on it. Another impossibility, another thing to take for granted.

He did wonder how such flamboyant use of magic could exist inside the walls of great Verd. Capital of magic and Inquisition alike, but taleweavers were sacrosanct, and maybe some of that rubbed off to the inns that carried their names. He would eat and then he would scout the inn to find out how an audience were most likely to stand and sit. Weaving might allow him to share his tale with those listening, but that wasn't an excuse to cheat on preparations. That was what had made him the greatest newscaster in the federation in living memory and, if he had anything to say about it, that was what would make him the greatest of taleweavers.

He entered the stage wondering how Harbend had spent his morning.

***

Harbend woke up stiff and cold. Early spring had yet to bring any real warmth to the city, and the quarters he lived in would need several days of heating to banish winter from its stone walls.

Back home in the office he called home he hadn't had time to hire servants to clean the rooms out and even less to bring fresh bedclothes in. He simply had to do with cleaning away the worst of the dust gathered there and hanging out his bedding for airing. For the second night since his arrival he made do with four chairs in a row as a bed. It wasn't comfortable, but half a year on the road had made him used to discomfort.

He was still yawning when he bent over his small stove. He was heating water into which he planned to throw in some of the dried herbs that had survived his absence to get something resembling a cup of hot tea. A rap on the door caught his attention. Harbend stifled a yawn before he walked over and opened the it. It wouldn't do to look like an idiot if it was a customer who, for some reason, didn't know that Harbend de Garak, newest trading house in Keen wasn't expected back for yet another half a year. Opening it Harbend regretted he hadn't kept on yawning. The bad breath of a full nights uneasy sleep might have scared away the man who stood waiting there.

"Harbend de Garak?"

"Yes I am. How did you find out I was back?"

Harbend didn't even bother inviting the man in. During the best of days Arden de Krante was an uncouth and unpleasant acquaintance, and this wasn't an especially good day to begin with.

Arden halted, almost tripping on his feet, and tried not to show he had been expected to be let in. Behind him Harbend could see the gloomy morning covering the street in sheets of fog. Maybe if he made the entire situation awkward enough Arden would reconsider and just be on his way? Maybe not, and it was a childish thought, and definitely not one worthy of a professional trader with his own house being registered for less than a year.

"Why come in, and try not to bring the weather with you, please," Harbend said with a voice he hoped wasn't grumpy enough to be offensive. He didn't have to like the master merchant, but he could definitely do with some information on whatever had occurred during his time with the caravan.

"Thank you. I think I'll do just that." Arden crossed the threshold as Harbend stepped back and closed the door.

A yell whistling and a cloud of steam had Harbend sprinting for his pot. As an afterthought he got a second cup which he wiped with his arm sleeve before offering it to Arden.

"Tea?"

Arden gave the concoction offered a suspicious look. "You call that piss tea?"

"That piss, Master de Krante, is the same as I have." Ah, you could always trust Arden to behave like the peasant he was. "I have been here for but a couple of days and have not had time to cater for my pleasures yet," Harbend added as an explanation. No matter how much he would have liked to see the back of the man vanish out the door he would gain nothing by matching the lack of etiquette that was something of a trademark of the master trader.

"I see. Believe I'll have to do with this, eh, tea then."

"I believe so as well," Harbend said with what he hoped was a pleasant tone. "Anything interesting happening in these parts?" he asked after sipping a little of his tea. Arden was unfortunately right—it didn't taste like any proper herbal tea should do, Harbend noted sourly. He flashed a smile to Arden and made a show of taking another mouthful of the swill.

Arden grimaced and put his cup down on the table they shared. "Apart from Hasselden burning and rumours of the imperial engineers bombarding raider ships at the south coast, no."

Hasselden burning, well he knew that to be true. How could he not? Memories of shipwrecks littering the harbour and the ghostlike shells of houses behind it still lingered in Harbend's mind. They had been forced to make land north of the port when the ship's captain, sensibly enough, refused to risk his ship in a harbour turned reef.

"I know," Harbend murmured. "We sailed there from Chach, or would have. Had to find temporary port elsewhere."

"I was going to ask about that. From Chach you said?"

"Yes. Should have come back the same way we went, but there were some trouble in Belgera and we were jumped from there."

"Magic! How could you resort to such foulness?"

Harbend sighed. He didn't want to start a discussion about magic, especially not in the capital of Keen. "We were not given a choice," he said. "They wanted us out of Belgera as fast as possible." Well, that was almost true. Neritan Hwain had wanted Arthur and him out of there as fast as possible, but he was definitely not going to explain why he had trusted a golden mindwalker without even asking for an explanation.

"What did you do?" Arden gasped.

"We did not do very much, but there was some kind of conflict involving Gaz, and, ah, as we had arrived with a lot of valuables there was a clear risk that I, as the head of the caravan, would be directly targeted." Now that was taking a wide berth around the truth, but Harbend droned on, "They could not risk it evolving into a conflict with an official merchant expedition from Keen involved. Bad for future trade." Neritan couldn't risk it exploding into a full blown war if it ever became known that a taleweaver had been hunted down like an animal inside the capital of an allied nation, was closer to the truth Harbend guessed. He fervently hoped that Arden couldn't read the truth from the thin but involuntary smile spreading on his face. "Look, Master de Krante, I am here. The caravan is safely on its way back by now and I can prepare for the sales before it even arrives. Should we not just be happy that things took such a happy turn instead?"

Arden didn't look convinced, but Harbend knew he would not start prying. Not yet anyway.

They shared the rest of the tea, or rather Harbend drank it himself while Arden looked on with ill disguised distaste in his eyes, and during the time it took Harbend to down the awful tasting drink as it cooled, something that did nothing to enhance its taste, they did exchange news in a sense. Harbend said nothing that would reveal what had really happened, and Arden didn't give away any information that Harbend could possibly have used to gain any kind of trading advantage.

In the end Harbend had his wish to see the back of Arden de Krante vanish out the door fulfilled, and could start planning to meet Arthur in a more pleasant environment.

Ordering a coach didn't take long, and during the ride to Two Worlds, watching the last strands of drifting fog clear away from the busy streets, Harbend had time just enough to realize that with Arden's visit over the word would be out that Harbend de Garak was back. More were bound to come asking for him and for news about the caravan. Some he could avoid, and those he wanted to meet he'd already contacted the very day they arrived, but a few would come he neither wanted to meet nor could afford to avoid.

He climbed down the wooden block of stairs placed at the side of the coach and continued to the hotel entrance. As always they opened for him just as he was about to knock, and he passed the liveried guards, made his way up three stories and, surprised at his lack of panting, promptly knocked on Arthur's door. Half a year on the road may not have been comfortable, but it had apparently been good exercise.

He stood there in the marble corridor enjoying the view of overdecorated walls, cluttered statues and general gaudiness of the place. It grew on you, especially if the only decoration you had had for an entire season was a white blanket of snow with a thin, blue line of mountains as an added artistic touch. After that, nothing that broke the monotony seemed to be too much.

He smirked. It would be, he admitted to himself, only a matter of time before he came to his senses again. The smirk turned into a wide grin. He intended to enjoy every moment of that time.

He knocked again, but when the door still refused to open he returned down the stairs and left a message telling Arthur that he could be found in The Tree.