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were people gilding the past. The desert had grown. Sometimes we passed a place with roof peaks showing forlorn above the sand, where a village had been swallowed alive. Sesh told me that there were whole towns buried under the dunes; his parents had lived in one, clinging on until the desert was knocking on their doors. Such places always left me cold, thinking of rooms that had been full of people and voices, choked now with silent sand.
    I ended up staying with the caravans for two years.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    T HE EVENING LOST its grey-blue sheen and turned into a carnival of lights. The soft glow of the streetlights, a flare of witchfire, the distinctive lanterns of every kind of shop, chop-house, tavern, theatre... even in the less lively areas, what with two moons on a clear night and the portals lighting up the horizon, the city rarely gets truly dark.
    I couldn’t get Fain out of my head. If I didn’t know better I’d think he had a charisma glamour on him, but he didn’t need one.
    I’d encountered charisma glamours – actors use them a lot if they can afford it, and so do some of the more expensive whores – and to me they always have that slight artificiality, a sort of tang of metal. I don’t like them. I think they distance you from whoever you’re with, and that’s not what my business is about.
    Though, of course, for some in my profession, anything that helps them keep their distance, whether it’s glamours, drink, or narcotics like cloud, is the only way to survive. They’re in the wrong job, of course, but they don’t always have a choice about it. Some have to do it for money, some get dragged in. That was only one of the things that might happen to Enthemmerlee.
    I just hoped she was brighter than I’d been at her age.
    Near the square, the city is at its most beautiful. Great sweeping boulevards, surrounded by tiny winding streets barely wide enough for two riders to pass each other. The old Church of the Glorification, deep green picked out in gold and bronze; the Sleeping Garden with its statues and pale, night-scented flowers, glowing moths dipping and fluttering among them; expensive little shops like dragons’ caves of treasure; jewellery and fine weaponry, gowns and crystal and alchemical instruments gleaming in the lamplight.
    But as I moved south into the district called King of Stone, I left all that behind. Fewer lamps, the streets even more narrow, rats and worse than rats shuffling and scratching in the alleys. I kept a hand on my hilt and my eyes open.
    From the dank mouth of an alley I caught a glimmer of light. Something in the darkness was breathing heavily. I turned fast, and caught a powerful whiff of perfume mixed with alcohol fumes.
    “Babylon-baba! Where you been to?”
    “Glinchen?”
    Glinchen swayed out of the shadows, clapping one set of hands and reaching out with the other pair, jangling a dozen bangles. Several embroidered silk shawls draped massive shoulders, thick black and scarlet curls tumbled, vast cleavage acted as a display shelf for row upon row of glittering beads.
    Glinchen is one of the freelancers, and a Barraklé. Not unlike a human above the waist, not dissimilar to a sort of giant furry caterpillar below, with four arms, four breasts and more than enough of other things as well, apparently. Barraklé are hermaphroditic.
    Which in Glinchen’s case is the least of hir problems.
    I allowed myself to be drawn into a squashy hug.
    “Glinchen, what are you doing down here? This isn’t a good beat.”
    Glinchen shrugged, causing a cleavage earthquake. “Girl needs a change of scene, sometimes.”
    “No-one needs this scene,” I said, hopping out of the way of a trickle of sewage that chose that moment to appear from a side street and aim for my boots.
    “So what you down here for, honeysweet? Not your beat, neither.”
    “I need to talk to some people. There’s a girl who’s disappeared.” I got the picture out and moved under a