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  Skath gasped and closed her eyes.

  “At last,” crowed her obviously insane brother, releasing her. “At last you have hurt yourself. And I only assisted you a little: a minor sin.” He babbled on, switching to the language of Maratrace.

  “This city is mad!” Gaunt snapped. “Your own sister—!”

  “She is a disappointment to us!” he retorted in Amberhornish. “Mother and Father fight over what to do with her. She has never embraced abyssmitude.”

  “Embrace this,” Gaunt said, and backhanded him.

  He recoiled, clearly not anticipating her strength, or her willingness to cause another pain. “That is—that is against—”

  “I’m not from around here.”

  Skower stared into Gaunt’s face, a tear crawling down his cheek, and his peculiar intensity collapsed like a tower of sand. He fled down the stairs.

  “Good riddance,” she said, but with little satisfaction, for Skath’s eyes were still closed, as though the girl slept on her feet.

  “Perhaps if I splash her?” Bone said, looking at the watering can.

  Skath’s eyeballs danced behind shut lids, in a way Gaunt’s bardic teachers had discovered signified dreaming. “Wait,” she said.

  Skath’s eyes opened, and she shrieked. Bone backed away, and his elbow bumped the dandelion, knocking it over the side in a spray of shining fluff.

  “No,” Skath said, spreading her arms as if sheltering the entire weed garden. She uttered frantic sentences in the tongue of Maratrace, and a few words in Amberhornish: “No, you will not! It’s wrong! Wrong!”

  She darted downstairs, whence her brother had gone.

  The nonplussed wayfarers saw her sprint down the street, dust rising behind her sandals.

  “Ah,” Bone asked, “what just happened?” He held the sword away from his body as though it were a boa constrictor.

  “You speak as if I was there,” Gaunt said, rubbing her temples and reconstructing the scene in her mind. “All I can say is, two children just had very strange reactions to a magic sword. Stranger than ours, Bone.”

  “Did the Pluribus have a hidden agenda in sending it here?”

  “Are deserts dry?”

  They watched as Skath collided with the collection of drab-robed people they’d noted earlier—those who supposedly could not harm others, but wanted to. The boy Skower was already among them, leading the drab-robes toward the house.

  “Let’s consider this from the local point of view,” Bone ventured. “Two foreigners assault a pair of children in their own home.”

  The drab-robes pointed pale fingers at the weed garden.

  “I think our work here is done,” Gaunt said. “Shall we descend this fine, angled slope?”

  “Well said.”

  They began climbing over the wall—and stopped.

  “Do you feel what I feel?” Gaunt asked.

  “Would that be, dear Gaunt, a sense that it would be wholly impolite for us to flee the lawful authorities?”

  “Yes,” she sighed. “But even worse, that it’s shameful to tread our dirty feet over these immaculate walls, when honest folk would use the stairs.”

  Bone took a deep breath. “Enough. This time the sword presumes to interfere with our long-term plans. To survive, that is. We will overcome it. On a count of three. . . .”

  “Keeping in mind the sinister look of those towers. . . .”

  “. . . Indeed. . . we vault the wall.”

  Bone counted three, and both leaned forward.

  And both leaned back.

  They stood there, feeling foolish, but unable to move.

  “Second plan,” Bone said. “We throw the sword, the authorities claim it. Deed done.”

  “Excellent,” Gaunt said.

  Bone made to fling the weapon, but instead set the rosy rapier tenderly upon the roof.

  “Close enough,” Gaunt said. “Let’s flee.”

  They still could not descend the wall. They used the stairs. Progress was slow, leisurely, dignified. . . .

  “Bone, I Can’t. Move. Faster.”

  “Just keep walking.”

  The greater their distance from the Sword of Loving Kindness, the faster their pace. As they reached the front door, the compulsion was released, and finally they could run.

  It was almost soon enough.

  The doors burst in and six drab-robed figures entered. These assumed the stances of trained unarmed combatants, dropping their centers of gravity and spreading their feet, raising calloused hands and sizing up Gaunt and Bone. Gaunt glimpsed scarifications surrounding hard-looking eyes.

  “Downstairs,” Bone said, snaring her elbow like an erratic dance partner. They fled to the dim underground, shouts and snarls behind.

  ~ ~ ~

  Imago Bone discovered no means of barring the stairs, but a stone passageway revealed side rooms with wooden doors. He ushered Gaunt into what appeared the master bedroom. He regretted they couldn’t use the bed, blanched at the nearby torture equipment, and noted a large air shaft. He and Gaunt dragged gnarled-looking furniture to block the door.

  Fists pounded the other side.

  Bone whispered, “The air shaft leads to the outer wall.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Every thief’s an amateur architect. Up you go.”

  “And you?”

  “I will follow. Go.”

  Though Gaunt was quick to challenge him on matters social, geographic, or metaphysical, at least she acquiesced in matters of survival. Sometimes. He gave Gaunt a boost and she scrambled up the shaft.

  “Open!” cried one of the drab-robes in passable Roil. “We will not harm you.”

  “Spare me,” Bone muttered, preparing to jump.

  At that moment the door shattered, and a robed hand emerged.

  “Spare me,” Bone prayed to whatever gods yet lived. The drab-robes were far better combatants than he’d feared.

  The thief faced a dilemma. He could follow Gaunt into the air shaft, but the drab-robes would see, and would surely have time to slip outside and trap Bone, if not Gaunt as well. Whereas, if Bone stayed and struggled—fought was not really in his professional vocabulary—all the drab-robes might be delayed, allowing Gaunt a better chance. Who knew? He might even win. The drab-robes might simultaneously trip each other.

  There was another word that was not really in his professional vocabulary, and he’d never quite used it with Persimmon Gaunt. He did not think of it as he threw pain-implements like daggers, as he tripped foes with bedsheets, as he kicked and bit. He did not think of Gaunt at all, save as the fleeting idea of a woman running free beneath the sun.

  He did not even consider the word as they grappled him and smothered him with a pillow and toppled him into a hazy dream wherein he clasped Gaunt’s hand in Palmary’s finest restaurant, peering deep into her eyes.

  Is there something you wish to say to me? said dream-Gaunt.

  Yes. I hate magic swords.

  An aching haze cleared at last, and Bone awoke upon perhaps the most comfortable chair ever placed within a torture chamber. Later, despite painful associations, the memory of that chair would taunt him. It was vast and velvety and perfectly supported his long-abused frame. If the thief ever retired to a cave in the mountains, he must plant such a chair in the center of his loot and doze in sight of the jewels and gold and easily-transportable paintings. The lords of Maratrace knew their furniture.

  Alas, they also knew other arts as well.

  All around him there were racks and ropes, needles and whips, boxes and spikes, all dedicated to the ostensible purpose of the room, that of damaging the human body by precise increments. Testifying to their use, there came to his nose a reek of mingled blood, sweat, and excretion, clouded by a touch of incense.

  Such torments were perhaps to be expected. What startled Bone were the identities of the tormented.

  Four of Bone’s drab-robed captors surrounded him—stretched, pierced, constricted, and dripped upon.r />
  Bone sat unrestrained. Those in the devices were, by all appearances, free to leave as well. Even the man within the little confinement box could snake his arm through a hole and release the latch. Instead, the lunatic leered through another hole at Bone. They all bore demented, predatory looks, these drab-robed ones. Here and there Bone caught sight of precise and extensive scars.

  A group of more ordinary Maratracians lurked in a nearby gallery, clutching iron bars to peer more intently at the tableau. These citizens were less diligently scarred, with merely the odd missing finger or eyepatch or artistic incision.

  “This is some bizarre delirium,” Bone remarked. “I’ve dallied with dreamtellers in Palmary. As that city is fashioned in the shape of a hand, it attracts all manner of soothsayers—except oddly enough the palmists, who claim the layout overwhelms them.”

  “So,” said the man in the box, in decent Roil. “What did these dreamtellers say?”

  Why not converse? “Dreams (such as this surely is!) toss about the elements of our psyches, as a gourmet tosses a salad. As the arrangement of rent vegetables serves the chef’s purposes, so the parts of a dream may be impossible to reassemble into their original lettuce heads.”

  There were gentle snickers. “Are we the croutons then?” asked the man in the box.

  “Indeed,” said Bone, warming to his topic as a mouse warms to the notion of holes smaller than cats. “You are much as old, pebbly croutons in the salad of my mind. No doubt with reflection I could find the symbolism in each of you.” He craned his neck. “You with the water dripping onto your forehead, you might be the father who demanded I join him at sea. You upon the rack might represent my desire for greater romantic prowess.”

  “This is fascinating,” said she upon the rack.

  “Very true!” Bone eased deeper into the chair. “Now, you inside the box might recall that unfortunate time I was apprehended robbing the delvenfolk embassy in Palmary. I was conscripted into their games of hunchball. You play in a delven-height chamber in pitch blackness, you see, and the balls are of stone.”

  “And I?” said a woman upon a slab caged by needles, so tightly penned that even breathing occasioned pricking. “What do I represent?”

  “Ah,” said Bone, wincing, “that is perhaps most disquieting. There is a companion of mine, who stirs unaccustomed feelings. To approach those feelings more closely inspires fear; to withdraw inspires pain.”

  The woman grunted, and to Bone’s horror, she clapped, piercing her hands in the process.

  “Well done!” she said. “You obviously comprehend much of this universe’s rue. Yet you hold back at the last. Why assume this is a dream? Is it so implausible that you sit here, in truth, in our mindthresh?”

  Bone swallowed. This was indeed a conclusion he wished to avoid. “Were this truly real—and I assure you, many would wish me in such a room—then surely I would suffer, not my hosts.”

  There were wry chuckles all around.

  “You have never been to Maratrace,” said the man in the box.

  “It is you who are in the compromised position,” said the woman upon the rack.

  “How can that be?” said Bone. “I lack only a glass of wine and a good book.”

  At a nod from the woman among the needles, a noseless citizen entered and proffered a glass of ruby liquid. An earless citizen followed with a translation in Roil of Darkfast’s Memoirs.

  “I fear this only supports my argument,” Bone said after an agreeable sip.

  “You are mired in illusion,” said the man being dripped upon. “You do not understand the horror that underlies reality.”

  “Your comfort holds you back,” said the woman upon the rack. She coughed at one of the departing citizens, who obligingly turned the crank near her head. Bone made a point of opening and examining the book. He glanced at the line Cynics have the most fruitful sense of humor, but they get the least nourishment from it.

  “We by contrast,” said the woman of the needles, “have trained ourselves to understand truth. We rise above the human condition, perceiving it fully. Pain gives us wings.”

  Bone sighed. “I concede this much: you are mad enough to be real.”

  “You draw nearer to understanding,” approved the man in the box.

  Bone sized up the situation. “I am a prisoner then, in the torture chamber of Maratrace.”

  “Your terms are crude,” said the punctured woman. “In place of prisoner, we would prefer supplicant. Instead of torture chamber, we would say mindthresh. And rather than rulers we encourage you to say Comprehenders. The citizenry follows us because they respect our abyssmitude, our knowledge of life’s pain. I, for example, have no name other than Mistress Needles.”

  “And to secure my freedom, I must cultivate abyssmitude?”

  Mistress Needles said, “I am impressed.”

  “As am I. I appreciate your lesson. Applaud it, even. This wine, which seemed so pleasant, is now revealed as swill.” He drank it down. “Ugh. There. May I go?”

  Mistress Needles sighed.

  “Yes, I rather thought not,” Bone said.

  “We regret confining you,” said the other woman (Mistress Rack, perhaps?) “Though I assure you, we will not significantly damage you without your consent.”

  “What is significant damage?”

  “Whatever we deem so. Do not be overly concerned. We are civilized folk. However, you and your companion do pose a problem.”

  “What problem? We came bearing a gift—”

  “Your gift,” said he who might be Master Box, “is a weapon sent by the Pluribus to destroy us.”

  “Destroy you? The thing warps minds, and even its rose petals draw blood. But it’s hardly going to wreck your little madhouse.”

  “How little you understand,” said the man (Master Drip?) with forehead targeted by waterdrops.

  “Our founder, Captain Slaughterdark,” said Mistress Rack, “warned of this blade. It does not inflict wounds. It inflicts sweetness. It forces one to see the world through rose-tinted eyes. It is dreadful.”

  Bone smirked. “On that we may agree.”

  Mistress Needles said, “Then may we be in harmony, to the degree harmony exists in this cesspool of a universe. The sword’s presence may yet prove a desirable thing. For your freedom, Imago Bone, and that of the companion who brings you fear and pain, depends upon its destruction.”

  “Um. How might such a thing be destroyed? We could hardly bear to release it, let alone harm it.”

  “Things of magic,” said Mistress Rack, “have their own rules of being and unbeing. We believe it can be unmade, if used to destroy an innocent.”

  “That demented girl you encountered,” said Master Drip. “The one who raises weeds and refuses self-injury and smiles at nothing. She is the one.”

  “Yet,” Bone said uneasily, “I am given to understand your beliefs forbid doing harm without consent.”

  “They forbid us,” said Mistress Needles. “You are not one of us, outlander. Yet.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Persimmon Gaunt was uncertain whom she was angriest at, herself or Bone. It was she who should be the prisoner. Did not all romances feature the damsel’s capture? (Though she disliked romances and the term damsel.) More to the point, was she not a morbid poet, able to mine the very prison stones for material?

  Bone should be out here. Bone was the thief with far too many years’ experience, the burglar who scaled buildings like step-stools, the schemer who spied cracks in all defenses. But he was not here, and Bone would insist she flee.

  Go on (he’d say). The dire book is safe with the Pluribus for now. Hone your self-preservation skills. Return to poetry, count yourself lucky to be free.

  But she wouldn’t abandon him. Did she love him? It almost didn’t matter. She had allowed Bone to fall for her sake. Somehow she would get him back.

  She almost felt his presence beside her as she skulked through the day. She returned to the harbor district and its clutter an
d crowds, obtaining hunks of dry bread and moldy cheese, dressing herself in a tattered robe. She lurked like a troll beneath a dank pier, whence she heard officials (Comprehenders, the market whispers named them) harassing every merchant stall and vessel. Seeking her. The traders, drawn to Maratrace’s useful location from many lands, did not like the place or the Comprehenders; but they promised to report the auburn-haired outlander.

  She breathed deeply as her bardic instructors had taught, watching the sun descend and make the sky recall the Sword of Loving Kindness.