"No," said Snake after a thoughtful moment. "Not Silvertop. His sort of silliness is in inaction: forgetting to eat, or not coming in out of the rain. Active silliness is not his style."
"Silliness? To leap heroically forward and take a blow meant for me?" Koseth clutched at his chest. "I'm wounded."
"Silly for Silvertop to do it. Now had it been me, instead..."
Koseth warily raised an eyebrow.
"Well," said Snake with a bat of her lashes, "they'd be shocked, wouldn't they, to find that their victim could fight his way out of a flowerbed?"
"May your linens mildew and your glassware crack."
Snake grinned. "Start at the beginning, my dear, and tell me the whole of it." He did, trying to be thorough. When he was finished, Snake said, "Show me the piece of the jar."
"That's partly why I came here," Koseth said, gesturing vaguely at the collection of ceramics on one wall. He pulled the parcel out of his coat pocket, unwrapped it, and handed it to her. She carried it to the window and peered at it closely all around, rubbing her thumb over the inner and outer surfaces and holding it up to the light.
"It's Zhir work," Koseth offered.
"Umm. The shape and the ornamentation are unique to Ka Zhir." She looked up, frowning. "But that isn't where this was made."
"But if it's unique—"
"Come look," Snake said, and he obeyed. "See the footring on the bottom? Zhir potters cut the footring on their pots with a square-edged tool, and you get a sharp angle where the foot meets the pot. This was cut with a rounded edge. Liavekan potters sometimes cut the footring like this, but the ring is usually thicker when they do, and much higher."
Koseth shrugged. "A Zhir pot with impure foreign influences?"
"I don't think so.'· She put it in his hands and pointed. "Look at the spots in the interior glaze, where the oxides in the clay have leached through. Zhir stoneware is very clear, almost as clear as porcelain. The combination of this and the footring suggest that this pot is Tichenese."
After a moment, she said, "You're staring again."
"Tichenese?"
"Probably."
"Fascinating. Tell me, why would you suppose I found a piece of a Tichenese forgery of a distinctive Zhir jar on my bedchamber floor?"
Snake's eyes got wide again. "Because you were supposed to?"
"No—because whoever searched my bedroom after I disappeared was supposed to."
"What I meant."
"And whoever found it wasn't supposed to know it was Tichenese."
They stared at each other over the fragment for a few long moments. Koseth knew that Snake was fitting the facts together in her mind; it was, after all, what he was doing.
"Tichen would love to see Liavek and Ka Zhir hacking pieces out of each other again," she said. "I'll wager they weren't pleased to see Calornen's Stone returned so peacefully."
"And the apparently Zhir kidnapping of a Liavekan noble would certainly toss a cat into the henyard."
"Do we go to the Guard with this?" Koseth scrubbed his face with his fingertips. On Silvertop's face, it was more distracting than refreshing. "When the inspector from the Levar's Guard gets to my townhouse, Maseka will direct him here. Whether he'll come straight here or not, we don't know." Koseth drummed his fingers on the windowframe. "Damn! If the kidnappers find out they only have half of me, what are they likely to do? How much danger is Silvertop in?"
"That depends. Half of you is quite enough to rouse Liavek against Ka Zhir."
"Unless they don't mean to hold him hostage at all."
Snake understood him immediately and paled. "Let's go after them, then," she said quietly. "I'll roll Thyan out of bed and tell her to tend the shop. I won't tell her about Silvertop; better she should have her hysterics when we bring him back."
"We can't go after them. Which direction would we go? They could have gone anywhere, curse them, including out to sea." He paced the short distance the crowded shop allowed. He'd been wrong the night before, it seemed; his life as the Margrave of Trieth was going to be remarkably like his life as the Desert Rat. He remembered his visitor, Harma, and the memories the young man had forced upon him of the battle for Well of White Flowers. Chaos and butchery, revenge in the name of justice. The twisted features of garrison commander Iesu...
And the way they mingled with the features of the commander's clanswoman wife in the face of their son, barely come to manhood, beardless then. What had Hama said? "My father died that night."
"Get ready to ride," he said to Snake. "I know where they've gone." He looked down at the fragment of pottery in his hand. It was in two pieces now.
•
Snake's possessions did not include a fast horse, so they rode double back to Koseth's townhouse and he provided one from his stables, a big black gelding with an ugly head and long, powerful shoulders. Koseth gave Maseka their probable route, and told him to direct the Guard after them.
They rode as quickly as they could through the streets above the Levar's Park and out the Drinker's Gate. Then they turned north and east, onto a road that ran through the bleak western foothills of the Silverspine. Once, when they'd stopped to rest the horses, Snake asked, "If they're bound for Tichen, why this route? Why not through Trader's Town?"
'Too well-traveled. Hama is no cold-blooded professional, to drive a wagon at a leisurely pace down the highway with his captive tied up in the back. He's a young fool bent on revenge. He'll be on horseback, with his captive thrown over the saddle bow. Harder on the captive that way, too. So he'll have to stay on the byways until he gets to the Waste."
"And then?" Koseth shot her a bleak look. "If he gets that far, he can take any damn route he pleases. We'll have lost him."
"Well, then," Snake said, getting to her feet and pulling her ash-gray cloak around her. "We'd best not let him get that far."
The only comfort he had, he realized as they rode, was that if Silvertop opened his silly mouth and convinced Hama that he wasn't Koseth, Hama almost certainly would let him live. It was Koseth that Hama wanted, and he wanted all of him. And the young codhead wouldn't realize that killing Silvertop would be the best revenge of all: Koseth would be tormented with guilt for a friend's death, and cursed to wear the friend's body to keep the guilt fresh.
At least, Koseth hoped that Hama wouldn't realize that.
The sun was setting wound-red in the dusty air over the plains when they sighted their quarry.
Snake shaded her eyes with a gloved hand. "Four horses, three with riders, what looks like badly-made panniers on the fourth. That would be our wandering lad." She looked at Koseth. "They've turned west, toward the Waste."
He swore gently and flexed Silvertop's cramping hands. "They must have discovered that I'm not all there."
"No surprise for your friends."
"I gave you that one."
"Just because it's free, I should turn it down?"
Koseth grinned reluctantly. "Well, now it's a matter of the quality of our horses against the quality of theirs."
Snake checked the thong that tied her caravaneer's whip to her saddle. "We've been traveling at a harder pace than they have."
"Mm. But if those arc the same horses they rode south on—and they are, if he's bent on secrecy—then they weren't well-rested to start with."
"Let's find out." The black gelding leaped forward, and Koseth gave the chestnut his head.
They gained several yards undetected, simply by staying among the brush and scrub trees along the road. When they broke out into the sparsely grown lower foothills and into the sight of the Tichenese, they were galloping.
The rearmost rider of the party turned in the saddle, then shouted something. The Tichenese horses began to run.
It seemed to Koseth that he had been stretched out along the chestnut's lathered neck for hours. The thundering of hooves might have been the noise of a waterfall, or his own blood roaring in his veins. The chestnut's nose drew even with the last Tichenese horse's flank. Koseth s
lid his saber from its scabbard.
Then Snake's whip curled out with a sound like the sky tearing, and the Tichenese horse shied. The battle-trained chestnut leaped forward at a signal from Koseth's knees and hands, and slammed against the other rider's mount. Koseth's saber rang against the blade of the Tichenese woman.
She was a smart and savage fighter, and Koseth thought later, when he could turn his attention from wielding Silvertop's untrained muscles, that she might have been recruited from the Tichenese cavalry. She would not return to it. Her weary horse stumbled, her guard fell for an instant, and Koseth took her in the throat.
He turned to see the second Tichenese, his lance falling from his hands, yanked from the saddle at the end of Snake's long whip. He landed hard and lay still. Snake rode toward the fallen rider, coiling her whip.
"Desert Rat!" Hama's voice spat out, and Koseth wheeled his horse.
Hama had ridden his smoke-tailed gray up to the packhorse and held it there with his knees. In his right hand he gripped the man-shaped bundle by its wrappings at what looked to be the head. His left hand held his long Tichenese blade. The steel was gory red, and for a moment Koseth stopped breathing; but it was only the reflected sunset.
"Killing in cold blood won't please your father's ghost, Iesu Hama."
"Keep well back, and keep your companion back, too—more than the length of her whip."
At the corner of his vision, he saw the black gelding sidle nervously, back and to the left. "If you kill him, Hama, we'll tear you to pieces and water this slope with you."
The young man grinned fiercely. "Ah, but I will have had half my revenge. What will I have if I surrender?"
Koseth shook his head. "That's the wrong half of your revenge. The fool who let your father die is in this body."
Hama's eyes narrowed. "You think I will believe you did not want my father dead?"
"I wanted justice done. I was twenty-six years old, lesu Hama, and if possible, even more of an idealistic idiot than you. The Longfinger and Casoe clans had been treated like domestic animals for a generation, yet I thought they would be wise and noble human beings if I only put freedom in their hands. No, I did not want your father dead."
Hama was silent, watching Koseth. The Tichenese sword continued to press against the wrappings of the packhorse's burden.
"At least my country never used my idealism as yours has," Koseth went on. "How did they find you, Iesu Hama? Who came to you and sharpened your hate like an arrow point? Who set you in his bow and fired you at Liavek, with no more care for your life than a wealthy archer cares for a lost arrow?"
Hama's face warped in a snarl, and his right hand twisted in the cloth wrappings. At precisely that moment, Snake's black gelding reared and she slid sideways in the saddle, her whip hand low.
In the space of scrub before the packhorse, something flicked out from behind the black gelding, hissing and twisting through the sand in serpentine curves. The packhorse screamed and plunged forward. Hama's tightened grip on his captive yanked him out of the saddle.
Koseth dug his heels into the chestnut. As the horse leaped over the fallen Tichenese, Koseth flung himself off, onto Hama's chest, and swung the hilt of his saber down on Hama's temple.
Silvertop's remaining strength was not sufficient to knock Hama unconscious, but he was dazed enough to lie still when Koseth kneeled all of Silvertop's weight on his chest.
"You had it backwards, damn you," Koseth panted down into Hama's face. "It was I who owed a debt to your father, not you. I will pay it now."
A little tongue of fear flickered in Hama's eyes, before his jaw clenched and he stared bravely back.
"Idiot. At Well of White Flowers, I learned a bitter lesson in human nature. I also learned that blood makes bad currency—the rate of exchange is lousy." Koseth backed off him slowly, holding the tip of his saber to the young man's throat. "Stand up."
Hama did, though he looked a little dizzy.
"Now," Koseth continued, "you're going to get on your horse and ride toward Tichen. We're going to stand here and watch until you disappear over the horizon. If we ever see you again after that, you'll get to find out what we really think of you."
Snake was coming toward them, leading the black gelding and the packhorse and shaking sand out of the coils of her whip. Silvertop sat unsteadily in the pack saddle, wrapped in Koseth's crumpled dressing-robe, clutching the tiedown horns in front of him. Looking at himself in a mirror and seeing Silvertop had been disorienting; watching himself riding toward himself made him want perversely to laugh.
"I'll take care of his assistants," Snake said and stalked off, a length of thong in her hand.
Hama looked at Koseth, then jerked his head toward Silvertop, in Koseth's body, on the packhorse. "Yes. This pale little body would fit that one."
"He's a good man. His death would have lessened both of us." Hama looked down. "Mount up," Koseth said finally.
They watched as Hama rode north, his back very straight. His surviving henchman rode with him, swaying wearily, his hands tied to his saddle bow; the woman Koseth had had to kill lay over her saddle, wrapped in the cloth that had bound Silvertop.
The Tichenese were only a dark blur when Koseth said, "Silvertop, I hope you have an explanation of rare beauty for all this."
"Gently," said Snake.
Silvertop shook Koseth's head. "No. I mean, this shouldn't have happened. Not the kidnapping, though I suppose that shouldn't have happened either—that we switched bodies, I mean."
Koseth found it very odd to hear his own voice through someone else's ears. "And what should have happened?"
"I...what it was...listen, I'd rather not say, all right?"
Koseth swung around and rested his fist rather firmly on Silvertop's knee. "No, it is not all right. I have had an unpleasant day, Silvertop, and while I realize that yours has not been particularly restful either, I will consider it an insufficient penance. Unless you tell me something to change my mind."
Silvertop's blush tinted Koseth's sharp features. "It's...it's not even really a spell of transference. It was supposed to duplicate in me some of—" Here Silvertop descended to mumbling.
"Speak up."
Silvertop gazed at him rather desperately. "You...know so much about the world. And the way you talk, and move, and the way you think fast when you have to—I thought if I could do some of that"—he stared hard at his hands on the pack saddle—"then Thyan would like me more," he whispered.
For a long moment, Koseth and Snake stared. Then Snake turned her face against the black gelding's side, and her shoulders began to shake. Koseth covered his eyes. Finally he looked up at Silvertop, who was turning Koseth's face alternately pale and flushed. "That was all you wanted? You codhead. Snake, tell him."
Snake rolled over against the horse's flank. She was speechless with laughter, and tears rolled out the corners of her eyes and cut through the dust there. At last she gasped, "Too late! She already loves you!"
"She does?" Silvertop gaped unattractively.
"Only for as long as I've known her," Koseth said sourly. "Why should I have thought you would have noticed?"
"Oh," said Silvertop.
"'Oh,' indeed. Do you think you could switch us back?"
"I'm not sure. Something interfered with the spell I did, so I don't know how big a job it would be to straighten it all out again. And I don't have my luck object, anyway."
"It wouldn't do you any good," said Koseth. "In your body, I can't use my invested object. But it may be that in my body, you can." He pulled the black leather pouch, heavy with the polished quartz ball inside, from his sash and handed it to Silvertop.
Snake gave him a long look, and he shrugged. "It's almost my luck day anyway."
"Hah," she said.
Silvertop held the pouch for a moment, then shook his head. "It doesn't work. I don't feel anything."
Koseth groaned and Snake patted him on the back. "Happy birthday, Koseth," she said.
"What's happy?"
"This," Snake said, and pulled out her own coin purse and jingled it at him. "I may have enough money to pay The Magician to switch you back."
Koseth looked rather sadly at the coin purse. "Surely someone a little cheaper would—"
"—be able to undo Silvertop's work?" Snake spared a wink at Silvertop. "I wouldn't bet money on it."
•
"The Magician explained what had happened after he got us back in the right bodies," Silvertop told Thyan, who was listening raptly. They were all, Koseth and Snake, Silvertop and Thyan, sitting in the second-floor living quarters of the Tiger's Eye, watching evening settle over the City of Luck. "I'd put my spell on Koseth, which was supposed to work slowly over the course of the night. Then the Tichenese fellow used a spell that would serve as a sort of beacon for their magic, just in case Koseth discovered them and tried to misdirect their spells. A spell of association, y'see, works as a sort of binder on the physical body—"
"Get on with the story, and give me the theory later," said Thyan, but she was smiling.
"Huh. Anyway, the two magics mingled, since mine was still in flux when the second one was laid on, and instead of getting some of Koseth's characteristics, I got his whole physical self, and he got mine."
Koseth leaned over to Snake and said softly, "We've heard this before. Want to go sit on the roof?"
She pursed her lips. "Colder up there."
"Snake..."
"All right," she grinned.
As they climbed the ladder, they heard Thyan say, "The only thing I don't understand is, why did you put the spell on Koseth in the first place?"
Snake murmured, "I can't bear to watch," and hurried up the last few rungs.
The sky was clear, and the moon, though waning, was still close enough to full to wash the flat roof with silver. Snake kept a little garden here: an acacia tree in a huge tub, some fancifully trimmed flowering shrubs, a collection of late-season vegetables and herbs. Koseth sat on the edge of the acacia's tub and Snake sat on the wall.
"So do you forgive him?" Snake asked. "I think so. He's got blisters, saddle' sores, aching muscles, and sunburn. That seems like enough revenge." Her laugh was strong, and seemed to bubble up out of her like clear water.
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