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white sloth watched him out with almost human eyes, rearing up to its full height, its ambered claws glinting.
    He stayed in the city for that night and another day. It was quiet, the streets empty and stunned. He had snippets of rumour that the Moidart’s remaining supporters skulked the narrower alleys after dark and skirmished with groups of the city guard. He did not discount them, and kept a hand on the nameless sword. He expected to find Trinor somewhere in the old Artists’ Quarter.
    He enquired at several taverns there, but had no information. He grew progressively more impatient, and would have given up had not a derelict poet he met in the Bistro Californium advised him to take his queries to an address on Bread Street in the poorer part of the quarter. It was said that blind Kristodulous had once rented a garret studio there.
    He came to Bread Street at twilight. It was far removed from the palace and the Pastel Towers, a mean alley of aging, ugly houses, down which the wind funneled bitterly. Over the crazed rooftops, the sky bled. He shivered and thought of the Moidart, and the note of the wind became more urgent. He drew his cloak about him and rapped with the hilt of his sword on a weathered door.
    He did not recognise the woman who opened it: perhaps the light was at fault.
    She was tall, statuesque, and graceful; her narrow face had an air of calm and the self-knowledge that may or may not come with suffering. But her blue robe was faded, patched here and there with material of quite another colour, and her eyes were ringed with tired, lined flesh. He bowed out of courtesy.
    “I seek Norvin Trinor,” he said, “or news of him.”
    She peered into his face as if her eyes were weak, and said nothing. She stepped aside and motioned him to enter. He thought that a quiet, sad smile played about her firm mouth.
    Inside, the house was dusty and dim, the furniture of rough, scrubbed deal. She offered him cheap, artificially coloured wine. They sat on opposite sides of a table and a silence. He looked from her discoloured fingernails to the cobwebs in the windows, and said:
    “I do not know you, madam. If you would be—”
    Her weary eyes met his and still he did not know her. She got slowly to her feet and lit a squat hanging lamp.
    “I am sorry, tegeus-Cromis. I should not have embarrassed you in this fashion. Norvin is not here. I—”
    In the lamplight stood Carron Ban, the wife of Norvin Trinor, whom he had married after the fight against Carlemaker’s brigands, twelve years before. Time had gone against her, and she had aged beyond her years.
    Cromis upset his chair as he got to his feet, sent it clattering across the floor. It was not the change in her that horrified him, but the poverty that had caused it.
    “Carron! Carron! I did not know. What has happened here?”
    She smiled, bitter as the wind.
    “Norvin Trinor has been gone for nearly a year,” she said. “You must not worry on my behalf. Sit down and drink the wine.”
    She moved away, avoiding his gaze, and stood looking into the darkness of Bread Street. Under the faded robe, her shoulders shook. Cromis came to her and put his hand on her arm.
    “You should tell me,” he said gently. “Come and tell me.”
    But she shrugged off the hand.
    “Nothing to tell, my lord. He left no word. He seemed to have grown weary of the city, of me—”
    “But Trinor would not merely have abandoned you! It is cruel of you to suggest such—”
    She turned to face him and there was anger in her eyes.
    “It was cruel of him to do it, Lord Cromis. I have heard nothing from him for a year. And now—now I wish to hear nothing of him. That is all finished, like many things that have not outlasted King Methven.”
    She walked to the door.
    “If you would leave me, I would be pleased. Understand that I have nothing against you, Cromis; I should not have done this to you; but you bring memories I would rather not acknowledge.”
    “Lady,