1

Ilna os-Kenset stepped from gray limbo into the shadows of an alley too narrow for even a donkey to navigate. Wooden balconies were built out from windows in the walls above; from a few hung knotted ropes by which an agile occupant could come or go.

One end of the alley was closed by a blank wall. Hazy light edged the kink in the other direction, where a knuckle of the building to the right pressed toward the wall opposite, squeezing the passage so that Ilna had to turn sideways to round it.

She walked out onto the street beyond. It was late afternoon; too little of the sky was visible from within the alley for her to have been sure. There was a good deal of traffic, both pedestrians and carts. A recent rain had left the pavement slick and pools standing where bricks were missing or sunken; it wasn't raining now.

Ilna had never seen this street before in her life. She didn't think she was in Carcosa—the building styles, the brick street, the dress of the inhabitants all suggested otherwise. She caught the eye of a woman carrying a wicker basket of vegetables and a swatch of salt meat.

"Excuse me, mistress," Ilna said. The woman turned her head aside and strode past grim-faced.

Ilna's own expression hardened. This was a city, not a hamlet where people were polite because everyone knew everyone else and knew that they'd be seeing the same faces for the rest of their lives.

She surveyed the street and began walking. A shop selling earthenware. A tavern; the pavement in front was stained dark by the dregs of beer pails emptied there by children fetching fresh for the family's next-day use. A dairy used a butter churn for a sign. A ewe bleated from the yard in back, touching the part of Ilna that didn't remember it had no home in this world.

The buildings were two and three floors high, some of them even taller. Upper-story windows had cards in the windows; from the uniformity of the characters she assumed they advertised lodgings.

Ilna had always wondered what it would be like to read. She didn't need that skill now. People would read for her. People would do anything she ordered them to do.

Ilna came to a grocer's. A handcart of turnips and parsnips stood to one side of the entrance, blocking the raised sidewalk. On the other side was a tray of oranges covered with coarse sacking to shield them from the direct sun. The proprietor sat just inside where he could keep an eye on the sidewalk display.

Ilna lifted the sacking and began to strip weft fibers from the edge of the cloth. She didn't recognize the material, but her fingers felt an image of dry soil and clumps of leaves like swordblades.

The proprietor was counting eggs into a housewife's basket. He took the woman's copper coins without checking them for weight and followed her out of the shop. "Hey you!" he said to Ilna.

Ilna ignored him. She had a dozen strands loose; her fingers began to plait them together.

The shopkeeper jabbed Ilna's shoulder with the tips of his fingers. Passersby eyed sidelong what they thought was an argument; no one stopped to intervene. "You!" the man shouted. "Are you some kind of booby? Get away from my store or I'll—"

Ilna finished the design. She raised the fibers for the shopkeeper to see. The man froze mute, his mouth open but the threat frozen on his tongue.

A woman moved in the back of the shop. "Arrek?" she called.

"What city is this?" Ilna said in a voice as cold as a serpent's. She held the pattern rigid in the frame of her hands.

"This is Erdin on Sandrakkan," the proprietor said. His words were only sound; there was no life at all in them.

Ilna nodded crisply, a reflexive acknowledgment that the shopkeeper couldn't even see. "Where is the nearest mercer's shop?" she asked. The woman was coming up the aisle of the grocery, wiping her hands on her apron.

"Beltar or-Holman has a shop in the next block," the man said in the tones of the dead. "On the corner of the street and a close."

"Arrek?" the woman from the shop said. She grabbed the man's shoulder. "Arrek!"

"Point the way," Ilna ordered, ignoring the woman just as the man she controlled did. He extended his right arm.

She tossed the plaited fibers to the ground and strode away. She didn't know what a "close" was, but the shop would be obvious. Behind her the woman was chirruping to the shopkeeper in growing agitation. He gasped like a whale blowing and staggered into the cart of root vegetables.

Shops in Erdin weren't grouped like those of Carcosa. She passed a cobbler, a salt seller, and a cookshop selling fish stew. The pavement near the doorway glittered with iridescent scales.

The air was thick with smell of brackish groundwater as well as the recent rain. It was a hot day and the gutters reeked.

The mercer's was across the street; she hadn't asked that. The shopkeeper hadn't had the will to volunteer the information even if he'd had the desire to do so. The close proved to be a dead-end alley like the one she'd entered Erdin by.

Ilna crossed despite the traffic, never touching and never endangered by any of the pedestrians and carts clattering over the bricks. She'd always been good at judging patterns; now she knew how every moving object interacted with every other object.

She entered the shop beneath the swatch of bias-woven fabric that acted as a sign. The brown and blue dyes were colorfast, though city grime had darkened the cloth to the point that you almost had to know the pattern to recognize it.

The shop specialized in fancy weaves, thin stripes and checks. Ilna had noticed similar fabrics on the better-dressed locals, though the patterns were too busy for her taste. No matter.

The shop assistant, a girl with a thin face and straw-colored hair, was showing a matron a roll of cloth from the rack on the other side of the display room. Ilna looked through the part-bolts stacked end-on along the counter, leaving only a yard of the wood bare for transactions. The selvage of loose warp threads hung from each roll.

Ilna found the one she wanted, a bolt of red cloth stacked on the bottom of the pile where its width couldn't easily be compared with that of others. She tugged it out a few inches. The assistant glanced over but continued dealing with her present customer.

A pair of shears lay on the counter; the backspring was inlaid with brass lilies. Ilna ignored them and drew her knife from its case.

"Mistress?" the shop assistant called. "Mistress, I'll help you in—"

Ilna trimmed the selvage off the end of the roll, keeping the threads under firm tension as the steel parted them.

"Master Beltar!" the assistant screamed. The matron stared, backing against a rack of cloth. "Master Beltar!"

A middle-aged man with a broad face and reddish facial hair came from the back room. He held a pen and his fingers were stained with ink. "Yes, mistress?" he said sharply, following his assistant's eyes to Ilna.

She laid the handful of loose threads on the empty portion of the counter and began interweaving them. Windows along the two outside walls provided good illumination even at this time of day, but she could have worked in the dark. The matron took the opportunity to dart past Ilna to the street.

"Mistress!" Beltar said when he saw the bolt that had been pulled out and trimmed. "What are you doing? Sarhad, get the Patrol!"

"Don't, girl," Ilna said. She looked over at Beltar and continued, "This bolt was short width. You can lose your whole stock if you sell short cloth without marking it by cutting the selvage."

The girl had already reached the street door. "Sarhad, stop," Beltar snapped. "I'll take care of this. Ah, sweep out the back room and the stairs."

Looking wide-eyed at her employer and the strange woman, the assistant vanished behind the curtain into the back. Ilna returned to her task. The red dye was a muddy hue; the fabric was shoddy in all respects and didn't belong in a shop with the pretensions of Beltar's.

"Are you from the chancellor's office?" he asked when Ilna remained silent. "I assure you that if any under-width cloth found its way into my shop by accident, I'm more than willing to correct the error in a reasonable manner. . . ."

Ilna smiled coldly. He was offering a bribe. She'd quoted Valles commercial practice, since that was where her market and experience was, but apparently Erdin's regulations were equally stringent.

"I'm not from the chancellor's office," she said. "I'm here to make you rich beyond your dreams. For now you'll set me up in a room above your shop. I'll need a loom and yarn."

"Mistress," Beltar said in frank puzzlement, "I buy cloth—I don't hire weavers. If you've fabric to sell me I might be interested, but you'll have to find your own lodgings and materials."

"No," Ilna said, turning her face toward him again. "I won't. Look at this."

She uncovered the pattern on the countertop. Beltar bent forward to get a better view. His eyes narrowed; then he jerked back as the image came in focus. He brushed his hands in front of his face, trying to grasp what he'd seen or thought he'd seen.

"That's your real future," Ilna said without emotion. "That and a great deal more."

The mercer stared at her in growing wonder. "Who are you?" he whispered.

A pair of women came in the street door. "Go away!" Ilna snapped without looking around.

"Yes, we're closed now!" Beltar said. "You'll have to leave!"

They backed out, gabbling complaints. Ilna waited until she and the owner were alone again and repeated, "I'm the woman who's going to make you rich. That's all that need concern you."

The mercer touched the air again. His face was regaining its normal ruddy coloration but sweat beaded on his sandy eyebrows. "All right," he said. "Mistress Nirari has a room open across the street. I'll rent it for you. I won't have you in my house, but you'll have your space."

Ilna's fingers combed the red threads into two separate clumps, destroying the pattern as if it had never existed. "All right," she said. "We'll go there now. I have much to do."

She smiled. Beltar looked as though he might never smile again; but for all that his expression was warmer than hers.