The ancient order was on the wane, this much was sure. Kortis and Nemarl clung to their traditions, wore their phoenix-faces, spoke of lost greatness, and ate behind screens; Erran the Leopard spoke of the present, which mare was to bear the stallion, which field must lie fallow, which soldier should advance his rank, and every dusk his captains feasted and drank wine in the wide palace hall, among the crimson candles and the half-nude serving wenches.

Most days I would be in the horse-park. There was a bronze-mask equerry, an alien from So-Ess. Part of the five-city army that attacked Eshkorek, he had been snared in the fighting, but he was well used to bondage now, and took a pride in Erran’s fine stables. This fellow taught me more about horses in a month than I had reckoned to learn, having been on and off them since I could walk. He was known as Blue-Sleeve. Erran, having him wear the blue color of So-Ess, had spiced the dubious privilege with an appropriate title. Blue-Sleeve appeared to accept this pleasantry, indeed, he gave no other name to those who asked.

The horse-park also provided Erran and his court with game and hunting. It had been some long-dead noble’s retreat at the edge of Eshkorek. Erran got it by a trick, and held it currently by weight of numbers. Most of the mansions in this far-flung quarter had missed the cannon blasts and the ensuing sacks, when firstly Purple Valley and next the Alliance of White Desert raped the city, before drawing off to quarrel among themselves.

When I was not with the horses, there were games of dice and chance, or the more cunning variety that entailed checkered boards and pieces of onyx, ivory, and green jade. Books, too, were to be had, bound in fine leather for the lower orders, though the golds stuck their masks into volumes of yellow metal, crusted with gems.

My first book, I thought, might be some trouble to me. I had learned only the crude tribal script, but with my occult gift for the city tongue, I gambled I should master their writing, too. Yet I put it off, only fingering the books, till I saw a man smiling—he was masked; you learned to tell a facial action by the movement of the eyes—and I lifted up the book and opened it, and found I could read, clear as day, what was put down there. I turned about with it, and read out to the sneering bronze a line or two, as it took my fancy. Only later, I wondered. It seemed to me these things were too marvelous. But, having no control over them, I adapted myself once more to my abilities, putting questions and doubts aside, as I had with my new life.

I learned to play music, too, at Eshkorek, and discovered I had some ear for it. Their songs were strange, the melody could go where you did not look for it, yet somehow the effect was pleasing. The girl who taught me this skill taught me other things also. Sometimes, looking at me under her lids, she would fashion chords on the silver-stringed neck of some instrument, winding up the bone pegs, then striking her narrow fingers over the sound box as a cat scratches at a ray of sunlight, to produce a high-pitched, delicate, silver trembling note that was like the music she herself would make in bed. I had much choice in girls that winter, but her I liked very well. Her name meant Sparrow, and she had a little mauve mark on her left breast, like a butterfly.