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being followed.
    "Don't worry," Lorn assures her. "All we're doing is buying cotton."
    "With our own coins-not clan coins-and there's no one to back us if it's not good."
    "That's why I'm here, remember?" Lorn says.
    "You can slip back into that mighty house if this doesn't work."
    "It's worked before. Why would today be any different?"
    "Because it's Hamorian cotton. Or that's what Aljak has let it be known. You can't trust him, not even so much as Jiulko."
    "He was the one who had the oils-Jiulko?" Lorn touches Ryalth's arm, gently, offering reassurance.
    "I don't know why you talked me into this," Ryalth murmurs.
    "So that you can start your own merchanter house. Merchanter women can refuse to consort, or consort by choice if they have a business worth more than five hundred golds. Remember?"
    "Don't remind me."
    "My sisters would like that kind of choice," Lorn says softly.
    "Why would they need it? They're protected women."
    Lorn smiles faintly, deciding against arguing. "If we take this Aljak's cotton... If we take it, did you arrange for a cart?"
    "Sormet has the next warehouse... he'll let us use his hand cart and charge me a silver for storage until I can sell it, if it's less than a season." Ryalth grins. "The oils... he got a silver for an eightday. So he'll be happy."
    "If the cotton's good."
    "Some of it will be good," predicts Ryalth.
    The two swing to the left and around a two-horse wagon that lumbers uphill. The wagon bed is covered, as required in Cyad, but the covering does not totally block the acrid odor of dyes carried in the small demicasks.
    "Green dye," Lorn murmurs.
    "You'd think you'd been born a merchanter, sometimes, and then... other times." Ryalth shakes her head.
    "That's why we work together."
    Ryalth laughs. "No... we work together because you want to sleep with me, and it's the only way you think I'll keep seeing you."
    Lorn smiles, slightly more than faintly. "Well... you're still seeing me, and you have a lot more golds."
    "Alyet says you'll leave me once you become a full Magus."
    "More likely that you'll leave me," he counters, laughing again. "I'm too young for you. You've told me that more than once."
    Ryalth turns again, this time along the Road of the Second Quay, which is the second street back from the stone piers where the trading vessels tie up.
    Although the road is spotless, for it could not be otherwise in Cyad, an air of disuse permeates the road that appears narrower than it is, running as it does between the high and largely windowless warehouses of gray stone. The acrid scent of ancient, chaos-carved stone drifts up and around Lorn, a scent that he has discovered few others discern.
    "His place is on the next corner, away from the harbor."
    "Are any of these used any more?" Lorn gestures to the warehouse to his right.
    "Most of them are empty. Aljak probably doesn't pay a gold an eight-day to rent the space. It belongs to the Jekseng clan, but they only have two ocean traders and a coaster left." She adds wryly, "I wish I had just two ocean traders and a coaster left."
    "Is that it?" Lorn nods toward the half-opened timbered door framed by weathered granite that had faded into a whitened and dingy gray shade more attractive from the hillside above than from where he viewed it.
    "Yes." Ryalth squares her shoulders, her hand brushing her belt wallet as she steps toward the open door.
    Lorn follows Ryalth through the opening created by a heavy wooden sliding door being rolled back perhaps five cubits. He enters the warehouse a step behind her, his posture conveying that he is indeed her lackey-or hired enumerator. His chaos senses flick across the racked items, stopping for a moment on the barrels of seed oil stacked in a cube to the left of the doorway. He does not nod, but his eyes sparkle, as he takes in the other items-a pallet of dark timbers; five tall amphorae, one slightly cracked, with darkness seeping from the crack; a stack of what appear to be bales of wool; another