As they started out, Sparhawk did something uncharacteristically impulsive. He reached out and took the small woman’s hand. ‘I love you, little mother,’ he told her.

‘Yes,’ she said calmly, ‘I know. It’s nice of you to say it, though.’ Then she smiled. It was an impish little smile that somehow reminded him of Flute. ‘Another lesson for you, Sparhawk,’ she said. ‘When you’re having dealings with a woman, you cannot say “I love you” too often.’

‘I’ll remember that. Does the same thing apply to Elene women?’

‘It applies to all women, Sparhawk. Gender is a far more important distinction than race.’

‘I shall be guided by you, Sephrenia.’

‘Have you been reading medieval poetry again?’

‘Me?’

They rode through the market place and on into the run-down quarter near the east gate of Chyrellos. While not perhaps the same as the slums of Cimmura, this part of the holy city was far less opulent than the area around the Basilica. There was less colour here, for one thing. The tunics of the men in the street were uniformly drab, and the few merchants there were in the crowd wore garments which were faded and threadbare. They did, however, have the self-important expressions which all merchants, successful or not, automatically assume. Then, at the far end of the street, Sparhawk saw a short man in a lumpy, unbleached smock of homespun wool. ‘Styric,’ he said shortly

Sephrenia nodded and drew up the hood of her white robe so that it covered her face. Sparhawk straightened in his saddle and carefully assumed an arrogant, condescending expression such as the servant of some important personage might wear. They passed the Styric, who stepped cautiously aside without paying them any particular heed. Like all members of his race, the Styric had dark, almost black, hair and a pale skin. He was shorter than the Elenes who passed him in this narrow street, and the bones in his face were prominent, as if he had somehow not quite been completed.

‘Zemoch?’ Sparhawk asked after they had passed the man.

‘It’s impossible to say,’ Sephrenia replied.

‘Is he concealing his identity with a spell?’

She spread her hands helplessly ‘There’s no way to tell, Sparhawk. Either he’s just an ordinary backwoods Styric with nothing on his mind but his next meal, or he’s a very subtle magician who’s playing the bumpkin to block out attempts to probe him.’

Sparhawk swore under his breath. ‘This might not be as easy as I thought,’ he said. ‘Let’s go on then and see what we can find out.’

The house to which Sephrenia had been directed sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, a short street that went nowhere

‘That’s going to be difficult to watch without being obvious,’ Sparhawk said as they rode slowly past the mouth of the narrow street.