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with a team of three skinnies, a fleet looking little vehicle indeed. I had noticed him officiating at the service, holding a chalice-shaped censer. He turned to give me his hand without dismounting, the reins still gripped in his free hand—a short, dense-bodied man, swarthy, with black hair like short fur. He was polite, and unmistakably disinclined to like me. When I saw him shoot Paanja Pandagon a monitory glance, I knew the man at once. Honest and gloomily inward, his loyalty to his more dashing friend was absolute. He was his friend's watchdog, a practical-minded man who probably felt his friend's only fault was a carelessly generous, undiscriminating spirit that trusted others unwisely.
    In consequence, though this Minim, Arch Censer (the post of second power behind the Ecclesiarch's, in fact) looked gloomy enough as I got in, and plainly felt a good day's swim had been spoiled (I had to smile, imagining what his reaction had been when Paanja had blithely recounted the twenty-weight he'd paid me)—in spite or because of the poor solemn fellow's brooding, I found myself rather liking him as well. What is finer, after all, than the unselfishness of loyalty?
    Broody he might be, but Fursten Minim well knew how to drive a fine costly dasher like this one. We skimmed and we flew, the team ran their skittery claws up more than one alleyway wall when he lashed us through high, fast corner-turns. Monumental Big Quay, full of structures in pompous scale, was full of back-alleys serving these edifices' hindsides for their mundane deliveries and dispatchings of services. Minim, with many a veer and a vectoring, ferreted us through a chain of these near-empty alleys, our wheelrims skating off sparks from the cobbles and flags as often as not, and brought us in a thoroughly exhilarated mood to the downstream corner of Big Quay. Here the sheer crags that backed the city closely approached the riverbank, tapering the city's southern edge almost to a point. Downstream of this point, there was just enough negotiable river margin to support the South Path, a twisting gravelled road suitable only for light conveyances. Here Minim slowed to a walk, and I joined him and Paanja in quietly savoring the vista of the river so closely flanking us, past a thin marge of boulders and trees.
    "How often we sneaked into Chancel a half hour late," exclaimed the Ecclesiarch, "Nimmy and I, young scoundrels in the Academy together—how often we sneaked in wet-eared and late, from stealing down here to swim after sevenses? Not truth?"
    "Truth," Minim said seriously. They spoke of the "Academy," where, as in most such incubaria of wealth, rank prevailed. Minim was mighty in family rank, but was ugly and utterly without presence. Young Pandagon's flair, contrariwise, won only jeers, because of the genteel poverty of his family connections. Both were social outcasts, then, as it happened, but their bond was not sealed until, one day when Paanja happened to be off on a ramble, he came across two larval oligarchs thrashing young Minim. Unhesitant, he pounced, and pummeled them bloody and senseless, and from this generous act, two half-brothers were born, so to speak.
    My private thought was that in that encounter the ardent Paanja had found his moment, his self—here was dangerous, disinterested Good to be done! It was hard not to like the pair of them, in sum, and it grieved me to reflect that perhaps these two excellent fellows, in the course of what might be coming, would stand in grave danger indeed.
    We left the path for a cluster of boulders, where there were smooth surfaces and pockets of sunwarmed sand. When we had stripped, it appeared how muscled and honed Pandagon kept himself, and I knew I had read him aright, for his body declared his ambition. Minim looked askance at my advancing to the water still wearing my back-rigged baby broadsword.
    "Is the weapon wise?"
    "Oh, no harm, thank you. Sheath's packed with brazzwax and skanx oil."
    "I mean,