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race, not unpleasantly. People had learned not to bother him; now they must learn the same about Alec. He followed him into the winter air, which was cold and sharp like a hunting morning.
    The streets of Riverside were mostly deserted at this time of day, and a thick snow-cover muffled what sounds there were. The oldest houses were built so close together that their eaves almost touched across the street, eaves elaborately carved, throwing shadows onto the last flakes of painted coats of arms on the walls below them. No modern carriage could pass between the houses of Riverside; its people walked, and hid in the twisting byways, and the Watch never followed them there. The nobles drove their well-sprung carriages along the broad, sunlit avenues of the upper city, leaving their ancestors' houses to whomever chose to occupy them. Most would be surprised to know how many still held deeds to Riverside houses; and few would be eager to collect the rent.
    Alec sniffed the air. 'Bread. Someone's baking bread.'
    'Are you hungry?'
    'I'm always hungry.' The young man pulled his scholar's robe tighter around him. Alec was tall, and a little too thin, with none of the swordsman's well-sprung grace. With the layers of clothes he had piled on underneath the robe, he looked like a badly wrapped package. 'Hungry and cold. It's what I came to Riverside for. I got tired of the luxurious splendour of University life. The magnificent meals, the roaring fires in the comfy lecture halls-----'A gust of wind whipped powdered snow off a roof and
    into their faces. Alec cursed with a student's elaborate fluency. 'What a stupid place to live! No wonder anyone with any sense left here long ago. The streets are a perfect wind-tunnel between the two rivers. It's like asking to be put in cold-storage___I hope they're paying you soon for that idiotic duel, because we're almost out of wood and my fingers are turning blue as it is.'
    'They're paying me,' Richard answered comfortably. 'I can pick up the money tomorrow, and buy wood on the way home.' Alec had been complaining of the cold since the first ground-frost. He kept their rooms hotter than Richard ever had, and still shivered and wrapped himself in blankets all day. Whatever part of the country he came from, it was probably not the northern mountains, and not the house of a poor man. All evidence so far of Alec's past was circumstantial: things like the fire, and the accent, and his inability to fight, all spoke nobility. But at the same time he had no money, no known people or title, and the University gown hung on his slumped shoulders as though it belonged there. The University was for poor scholars, or clever men hoping to better themselves and acquire posts as secretaries or tutors to the nobility.
    Richard said, 'Anyway, I thought you won lots of money off Rodge the other night, dicing."
    'I did.' Alec loosed one edge of his cloak to make sweeping gestures with his right hand. 'He won it back from me next night. In fact I owe him money; it's why we're not going to Rosalie's.'
    'It's all right; he knows I'm good for it.'
    'He cheats,' Alec said. 'They all cheat. I don't know how you can cheat with straight dice, but as soon as I find out I'm going to get rich off Rodge and all his smelly little friends.'
    'Don't,' said Richard. 'That's for these types, not for you. You don't have to cheat, you're a gentleman.'
    As soon as it was out he knew it had been the wrong thing to say. He could feel Alec's tension, almost taste the blue coldness of the air between them. But Alec only said, 'A gentleman, Richard? What nonsense. I'm just a poor student who was stupid enough to spend time with my books when I could have been out drinking and learning how to load dice.'
    'Well,' St Vier said equably, 'you're certainly making up for it now.'
    'Aren't I just.' Alec smiled with grim pleasure.
    The Old Market wasn't old, nor was it properly a market. A square of once-elegant houses had been gutted at the ground