At first he thought Casimir must have been thrown out of the Libraries. Some of the deacons were utter shits, and he had half anticipated such an outcome. Then he realized the boy was leading a slender figure in a comically oversized cloak, and that the expression on his face was profoundly anxious. Frowning, Ammas rose from his chair and turned over his shingle, wondering if this was a client, or if this was trouble.

"Master Ammas," Casimir panted as he led the figure by the hand, helping it climb the shallow steps of the portico. "This lady is named Mari. She asked if she might hire you for -- for an illness."

Mari lowered her hood, a tumble of raven black hair spilling from it as she surveyed the cursewright with her brightly hazel eyes. Ammas felt a queer sense of doubling. He had seen this woman before, or someone very like her, but the memory was so foggy it might as well have been of a dream. A dream of shivering candlelight and soft but lively music and a voice of song so gorgeous it might have been an enchantment. Shaking his head he turned to Casimir, his eyebrows rising far enough to disappear under the brim of his charm-bedecked hat. "Her name is Mari, and she has an illness. I take it you never made it to the Libraries?"

Casimir frowned. "I did! I mean, I did, Master Ammas." Even now he had enormous trouble thinking of Ammas as "master" anything, perhaps because he rarely insisted on the title. But when he was dealing with a client it was necessary, and Casimir knew it. "She had gone there looking for you. Deaconess Hadeen said so."

Now Ammas regarded Mari not just with professional interest but real curiosity. "Take the meats down to the cellar, Casimir." It didn't do to use the word catacombs in front of a brand new client. "We'll address your current assignment another time. Because your next one is going to be how to question a prospective client."

The boy looked over his shoulder unhappily at Ammas until the cursewright tipped him a wink, at which the shame around the boy's chest dissolved immediately. Once Casimir had disappeared into the temple, Ammas gave Mari his full attention, again struck by that tantalizing flash of memory. The girl was lovely, but why should she make him think of music?

"Now," he said in a businesslike air, clasping his hands together. "I ask your pardon for my apprentice. He's still rather new."

"And very young," the woman remonstrated, frowning. "I did not expect you even to have one, honestly."

"Nor did I, quite frankly. But he's a good lad. A very capable lad." He invited her to sit at the little table, pulling out the chair for her. It did not escape Ammas's eye that she seated herself with a studied courtliness that was visible even through the concealing folds of the cloak. "Seretto tea?" He offered an empty cup, raising the steaming kettle in one hand.

She shook her head. "I am afraid I don't much care for it."

Ammas nodded and sat down, pouring himself a cup nonetheless. As he did the young woman untucked a thick cable of lustrous black hair from the back of her cloak, a soft sigh of satisfaction escaping her lips as she allowed it to breathe again. A faintly stale odor of sweat rose from her as she did it. Ammas wondered how long she had been on the road.

Next door on the porch of the Prideful Lioness, Selene and Katya were sharing a stick of kossun smoke, passing it back and forth, watching the proceedings with a pair of lively eyes. "Oh, she's a pretty one, Ammas!" Selene called out with a laugh. "Come on over here, lovely! You'll be the girl of the month!" Katya collapsed against her, laughing, mischief dancing in both their eyes.

Mari's cheeks flushed as if she'd been slapped, her gaze turning on the two of them angrily. Deciding at once to put an end to this before it began, Ammas threw the girls a filthy look, making them quail a bit -- they weren't used to such from the cursewright, even when they took it in their heads to tease him -- and helped Mari back to her feet, hurrying her into the temple's shadowy interior. The woman, whatever else she might be, was clearly a noble, and it seemed unwise to subject her to the Lioness girls' sense of propriety. Silently he wondered if Mari had ever even seen a brothel before.

The walk through the crumbling vaulted hall of the temple was long enough for her temper to cool, though she looked none too pleased with her surroundings. "This was a temple of the Graces, was it not?" she asked as she surveyed the worn statues and long-empty censers dangling from tarnished chains. "I thought the Ninefold Vow was supposed to prevent this sort of decay."

"Munazyr doesn't hold to the Ninefold Vow, my lady. The Argent Council renounced it." Ammas led her gently by the elbow to the eastern chapel, the temple's largest and the one where he spoke with clients when the weather (or their own condition) prevented the airier surroundings of the portico. A weathered but handsomely carved table dominated this chapel, flanked on three sides by tall shelves full of the books the cursewright consulted most frequently.

"Of course. I had forgotten." Smoothing her cloak down she sat at this more elegant table, where Ammas usually did his own writing and research. From behind the altar Casimir appeared, hanging back but observing the interview, as he had been instructed to do unless dismissed. Ammas had a feeling he would be dismissing the boy quite shortly; the woman was obviously unaccustomed to dealing with commoners. He suspected what little skill she had with them was of extremely recent vintage -- say, dating from the day she had left her home. Wherever that was.

"Now, my lady Mari. As Casimir said, you have an illness. Please elaborate. I need details if I'm to consider taking you on as a client." Ammas sat across from her, doffing his hat and smoothing his fingers through his hair as he did so.

Mari nodded, her hazel eyes roaming from Ammas's face down to the table. Her fingers threaded together restlessly, and soon she began to peel off her oversized gloves. Nothing fit her correctly, now that Ammas had a better look at her, and he wondered what circumstances might have forced a noble woman to steal clothes from commoners, probably right off a washerwoman's laundry pile. Before she could answer his question, however, Ammas noticed the lustrous shine of gold and rubies on her wrist, reflecting the temple's lamps. The draw of the bracelet was irresistible, and he found himself studying its workmanship, which was of the highest he had ever seen: everything from the gemstones' settings to the goldsmithing to the clasp.

That clasp, he realized as his eyes widened in astonishment, bore the image of a soaring eagle against a nine-pointed sunburst, a serpent in its talons. The design was tiny but unmistakable to anyone who had experience reading heraldry. For it was the crest of the House of Deyn, the house of the Emperor.

Ammas's eyes flicked from the bracelet to the woman's lovely dark hair. Again he seemed to hear the strains of beautiful music. And suddenly he remembered a night from when he was a small boy even younger than Casimir. That night he had gone with his mother and father and and aunt and uncle to the city of Talinara, the only night he had ever visited the Chalcedony Palace. There he heard the Emperor play his dulcimer and serenade the assembled courtiers with his unfathomably beautiful voice, the voice that seemed so ill-at-home in his corpulent frame. In Ammas's memory the Emperor's body was not even half so awful as the horror it would eventually become.

He had danced that night, Ammas had, his father and mother looking on with mingled pride and anxiety -- even then the Emperor was notoriously fickle. His uncle, the Lord Mourthia, was more confident, as he had taught Ammas the steps himself. For years he thought he had fallen in love a little that night. Most who saw the Empress-Consort in her youth felt the same way, for she was as kind and gentle as her husband was cruel and capricious, and surely the most beautiful woman in the whole of Talinara.

Ammas had forgotten some of the steps but the Empress-Consort had covered his mistakes with elegant ease, her fingers delicate and warm in their silk gloves, the smile that beamed down at him as tender as his own was shy, thoroughly abashed to be on display before all these fine lords and ladies. She had praised his dancing extravagantly to the court as he bowed to her and she curtsied to him, and even the Emperor had smiled. His uncle had bought him a toy soldier from Talinara's best crafthall, and his parents had been so relieved that they neglected to punish him for failing in his chores for a solid month.

The night he danced with the Empress-Consort was one of those childhood memories that was both completely forgotten and always present; more of a background color in his mind whose exact details he only recalled in dreams. But now he remembered it vividly, almost every second of it. Because the woman who called herself Mari was the Empress-Consort as she had been at the age Ammas had danced with her in almost every detail, save for her eyes alone. And those were the Emperor's eyes.

Ammas collapsed back in his chair, his face graying with shock. Normally he was quite capable of maintaining a neutral face and voice before any challenge a client might offer him, but literally nothing had prepared him for this, and he found himself speaking his thoughts aloud without a second's consideration. "You . . . you're Carala. You're the Emperor's daughter."

The young woman across from him flushed crimson but did not deny it. In truth she looked more alarmed than anything else. But when she spoke, her voice was strong and steady. "Yes. And you're Ammas Mourthia. And your father tried to kill my father. But none of that matters, because I need your help."