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red-headed man who stood at Ran Ai Yu’s side. Marek had never been formally introduced to the man, but he knew who Ivar Devorast was. So too, it would seem, did Phyrea. Devorast, if he recognized the master builder’s daughter at all, gave no outward sign of it. For all that, the man gave no outward sign of anything. Phyrea squirmed under his ambivalent glances.
    Yes, Marek Rymiit thought, much more interesting than dancing girls.
    “May I introduce you to Ivar Devorast of Cormyr,” Ran Ai Yu said.
    Marek found the look on Phyrea’s face so priceless he just had to smile and clap his hands. The other guests around him clapped as well, apparently thinking he was applauding the performance.
    “Aren’t they just?” a shrill voice invaded from his side. The effect of the spell made it painfully loud, and Marek couldn’t stifle a grunt and body-racking twitch. “Goodness, Master Rymiit. Are you well?”
    Meykhati’s awful wife.
    He forced a smile and nodded. “Yes, quite,” he whispered, his own voice rattling his ears. “I would hate to further interrupt the music.”
    The woman smiled and made a childlike motion as though she were locking her lips closed. A spell that would actually do that came to Marek’s mind, but he suppressed the nearly overwhelming urge to cast it, and a second incantation that would make the lock permanent. Instead, he kept his ears on the Shou merchant and her odd little couple, while his eyes made a great show of adoring the dancers from beyond the Utter East.
    “No,” Phyrea said, her voice so thick with the lie that Marek wished he could at least glance at Ran Ai Yu’s face to be sure she detected it as well, but alas Meykhati’s hideous wife still stood at his elbow, believing him to be every inch the dilettante her husband was. “No, we haven’t met.”
    “I would have remembered, I’m sure.” Devorast must have lied too, but there was no hint of that in his steady, uninterested voice.
    “Of course, though,” Phyrea said, “I have heard of your great… your great undertaking.”
    Two of the dancers swayed their hips to the jarring rhythm while the other five stood as still as statues. Marek found their utter lack of motion interesting, but only passingly so. The two lead dancers jangled their bells and otherwise made rhythmic hissing and pinging noises. They waved their hands in a way that Marek thought looked a bit like they might be casting spells, but he detected no fluctuation in the Weave.
    “It keeps me occupied,” Devorast replied. “I am away from the city for prolonged periods.”
    “Are you?” Phyrea accused. Marek raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps that explains why our paths have never even once crossed, though we seem to know many of the same people.”
    “Not too many,” Devorast assured her. “Meykhati, at least,” she said.
    Devorast shook his head, but it was Ran Ai Yu who said, “I asked Master Devorast to come with me tonight so that he might make the acquaintance of the senator.”
    “And have you?” Phyrea asked Devorast.
    “We have been introduced,” he replied.
    The two lead dancers wiggled back to the line behind them, and looking for all the world like water foul plucking food from a still pond, pecked one each of their companions and froze. Those so pecked began to sway and slipped out of line to take over the incomprehensible series of motions. The music changed too, going from one set of atonal pings to a series of bursts of grinding metal. Marek resisted the urge to flee.
    “It can be a burden, can’t it?” asked Phyrea.
    “Ma’am?” Devorast prompted.
    “Having too many friends.”
    “I wouldn’t know.”
    “Wouldn’t you?” she asked, and Marek got the feeling she thought she might be toying with Devorast. Silly girl. “You seem like a man who would have unusual friends. Like Miss Yu, here.”
    “Miss Ran,” Devorast corrected, and Marek so wanted to see Phyrea squirm. But instead, he watched the dancers sway around