Beyond my prison, I could hear music playing in the city. There was always some melody or song abroad in Eshkorek by night.

I smashed my fist against the leaded frame of the window, because this was no time for songs.

It was later that the door opened again.

It opened only a crack. Through the crack stole a single figure, the ultimate horrible jest. For Erran had sent me my last woman.

The candles were smoky; I could not make her out at first. Slender, muffled in a flimsy shabby veiling, the hint of light catching a bronze mask—I had been going to be rough, but checked myself.

“Sparrow,” I said, “of all of them, he should not have sent you to me.”

Yet she was too tall for Sparrow. Suddenly the veil slipped from her hair and the candles blazed in it. She put up her hand to draw off the mask, and she wore one long scarlet glove of blood from fingers to elbow.

My guest was Demizdor, and in her grasp the red-wet gleaming of a knife.

6

Her face was white. She said, as if it explained everything, “I have killed your guard. There was only one.”

I must have started toward her, for she held out the bloody knife to me, the grip to my hand.

“What can this be?” I said. “Has Erran sent you here so I can slice your neck as my final worldly joy?”

“Erran? Erran did not send me.”

“Why come, then, lady? Are you so hungry for earth in your mouth?”

Stonily she said, “You may kill me. But then you will never escape them.”

I took her wrist and plucked the blade from her fingers. I said, “That I am to die is your doing. You primed your golden bear to his sport.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then you are happy. Why talk of escaping? Why kill the guard?”

Her eyes were fixed on me, blank as two green pebbles in her colorless face.

As if I had not spoken she said, “Erran stationed only one bronze at the door. Since you have none but enemies here, Tuvek, the prince never imagined any would send you aid. Only among the pleasure-women do you have friends, and they would never dare to help you. Except for one. I summoned your music girl and took a loan of her garment and her mask. She shall say someone stole them from her if any question her, but I don’t imagine that they will. The route I shall take you is known to very few of the gold and silver rank; the bronzes know nothing of it. When I came to this door, I told the guard that Erran had sent me for your night. When he turned to unlock, I stabbed him. I did it clumsily, but he is dead. I took the ring-key. Another will come this way in an hour, at midnight, when they change the watch. We must be swift.”