Gradually, more prosaic needs began to impose themselves. The combination of terror and his frantic run through the afternoon’s heat had made him thirsty – very thirsty. And, too, he would have to find something for his Den Master, Lassner, if he was to eat properly tonight. He dismissed this last concern for the moment. Unlike his fantasy about the Kyrosdyn, if the worst came to the worst he could talk his way around Lassner for at least one night’s credit. Far more pressing now was his thirst.

He came to where several streets met, or rather collided, to form a wide and ragged square. Arash-Felloren was replete with charters, statutes, laws, by-laws, and all manner of rules and regulations dealing with the movement of goods and people, the conducting of business, marrying, burying, begging, borrowing, stealing, and every form of social and commercial intercourse in which waywardness of some kind had occurred since anyone had bothered to record such matters. Sadly, while they were both extensive and comprehensive, they were also, for the most part, either incomprehensible or mutually contradictory. They had one thing in common, however. They were almost universally ignored. True, there were several large areas of the city where order and prosperity prevailed, but the greater part of it was subject only to one law – the oldest of laws – survival.

The square that Pinnatte now entered was a frenzy of confusion and disorder as faltering skeins of wagons, riders and walkers struggled to cross it, weaving around and through a random sprawl of stalls and tents and gaudy handcarts at its centre. The dust-filled air was thick with oaths and clamour as travellers and shifty-eyed traders each vied for attention.

Pinnatte entered the fray. The jostling and buffeting in a place like this made it ideal for snatching purses and picking pockets, especially working with a team of like-minded souls, but, apart from his thirst, his luck having turned so sour today, he was in no mood for it.