mischief. I wish they would keep to their own territory."
"Mostly they do, is that not so?"
"Mostly. But they say a few live in each city. Plotting who knows what
kind of trouble for the rest of us." Shanamir leaned across toward Valentine,
caught his arm, peered solemnly into his face. "One might meet one anywhere.
Sitting on a ridge looking out toward Pidruid on a hot afternoon, for
example."
"So you think I'm a Metamorph in masquerade?"
The boy cackled. "Prove that you aren't!"
Valentine groped for some way to demonstrate his authenticity, found none,
and made a terrifying face instead, stretching his cheeks as though they were
rubber, twisting his lips in opposite directions, rolling his eyeballs high.
"My true visage," he said. "You have discovered me." And they laughed, and
passed on through Falkynkip Gate into the city of Pidruid.
Within the gate everything seemed much older, the houses built in a
curious angular style, humpbacked walls swelling outward and upward to tiled
roofs, and the tiles themselves often chipped and broken, and interspersed
with heavy clumps of low fleshy-leaved roof-weeds that had gained footholds in
cracks and earthy pockets. A heavy layer of fog hovered over the city, and it
was dark and cool beneath it, with lights glowing in almost every window. The
main highway split, and split again, until now Shanamir was leading his
animals down a much narrower street, though still a fairly straight one, with
secondary streets coiling off from it in every direction. The streets were
thick with folk. Such crowds made Valentine obscurely uncomfortable; he could
not recall having had so many others so close about him at once, almost at his
elbow, smack up against his mount, pushing, darting about, a jostling mob of
porters, merchants, mariners, vendors, people from the hill country like
Shanamir bringing animals or produce to the market, tourists in fine robes of
glowing brocades, and little boys and girls underfoot everywhere. Festival
time in Pidruid! Gaudy banners of scarlet cloth were strung across the street
from the upper stories of buildings, two and three on every block, emblazoned
with the starburst crest, hailing in bright green lettering Lord Valentine the
Coronal, bidding him be welcome to this his westernmost metropolis.
"Is it far to your inn?" Valentine asked.
"Halfway across town. Are you hungry?"
"A little. More than a little."
Shanamir signaled to his beasts, and they marched obediently into a
cobbled cul-de-sac between two arcades, where he left them. Then,
dismounting, he pointed out a tiny grimy booth across the street. Skewered
sausages hung grilling over a charcoal flame. The counterman was a Liiman,
squat and hammer-headed, with pocked gray-black skin and three eyes that
glowed like coals in a crater. The boy pantomimed, and the Liiman passed two
skewers of sausages to them and poured tumblers of pale amber beer. Valentine
produced a coin and laid it on the counter. It was a fine thick coin, bright
and gleaming, with a milled edge, and the Liiman looked at it as though
Valentine had offered him a scorpion. Hastily Shanamir scooped up the piece
and put down one of his own, a squarish coppery coin with a triangular hole