"Just do it, old man; save the talk for those who'll listen. And show uptonight, if you dare, to hear some tales you'll die from telling. Even if youdon't, I'll be telling everyone I meet I'm your apprentice-do try to remember myname."

She increased her pace, leaving him behind as if he were standing still.

Watching her draw away, Hakiem stopped trying to catch up. There were too manyBey around. If he wanted a story worth dying for, he could drop by Marc's.

He wasn't sure if he would, or sure that not going would save him frominvolvement by implication. But then, she- Kama-knew that. He'd been too dauntedby her talk of the Festival of Man and her whole bearing to consider much ofwhat she'd said.

Now, walking unseeingly Mazeward, toward the Vulgar Unicom for the first of manydrinks, he did: the Rankan 3rd Commando were rangers with a very bad reputationsince the real Stepsons had left town, filling their ranks with locals, to fightthe Wizard Wars in the north, there had been no force on the side of Empireworth rallying round. If the 3rd Commando was here, then the Empire hadn't givenup on Sanctuary, all was not lost, and resistance was really possible.

Of course, given the stories about the 3rd's brutality and their provenancethey'd been formed by Tempus long ago to quash just such a revolt as might bebrewing in Sanctuary-the cure for Sanctuary's Beysib ills might well be worsethan the disease.

Straton wasn't at all sure this was going to work. He hadn't seen Ischade, thevampire woman who lived down by the. White Foal, since before the war forWizardwall, when he'd been an on-duty Stepson, with the whole cadre behind himand Critias beside him, and the only troubles in Sanctuary were sorcery andrefractory death squads and the occasional assassination: all standard stuff.