A pungent aroma of burning herb brought the slumbering girl to her senses. She kept still there in the blackness for a long while trying to place in her mind the peculiar smell before creeping down the wool staircase-runner in clandestine pursuit of the answer. From the back parlor's doorway a cozy glow of light spilled into the hall. Toward it her bare feet inched, ears straining to pick up the muted voices from around the corner.

"We're giving him due consideration," murmured a masculine tone as smooth as watered silk. "He'll prove himself." A pause. "Mm, yes. He'll prove himself."

The lush, sloshing sound of pouring liquid eased into a few quieter drops and dribbles, followed by a sharp clink and a woman's throatier speech. "I don't trust him, Vel. Keep a keen eye; you'll find my instincts sound. ...Thank you."

She recognized a few thin words as her mother's. "Nothing hasty. We're not that straitened."

The sleek voice drawled a languid, "Faaaith, loves. Have a little faith, if you please. This mole comes with a premium recommendation. I wouldn't spare his rotting carcass a second glance if it were another case."

A few biting words flying from Mother's tongue raised to a sharper pitch, and the eavesdropper slid closer to the opening's soft radiance. Peering eyes snagged a glimpse of a deep-eyed, moonfaced Tir in a blue, high collared jacket lounging on the horsehair sofa behind her mother's standing figure. A shining row of brass buttons trailed from his chin down and over his rounded belly, glinting in the flush of brightness from the nearby table lamp as he tapped at a pipe perched in one hand. ...Father's carved meerschaum. She recognized it in an instant.

That thought was rapidly shaken aside, focus thrust back to marking the lean woman's grating rebuke. "...and don't think your smug words will matter worth the wench's bloody dressings when all hell breaks loose. I've seen it before; you damned well know I have."

Abruptly, a strong hand yanked at the girl's neck, dragging her away from the door. A slap found her cheek, kindling a fierce color unseen in the gloomy shadows of the corridor.

"You'll dig your own grave," snapped her discoverer, blazing eyes alive in the darkness above her head. He dug his fingers into her throat, squeezing at the breath trapped inside. A desperate surge of panic seared through the captive's brain, indomitable and wretchedly incoherent.

The man slowed his words, boring forceful sight into her bulging gaze.

"Restrain them. Assert your mastery."

Her thoughts reeled, falling beyond grasp until a rough shake knocked her left temple against the wall.

"Govern them!"

She choked, nearly blacking out, but another thump jolted her senses into internal animation. A dogged resolution swelled upward from somewhere in her stomach, waging war on the turmoil of her mind. Eyes streaming, she matched her tormentor's stare.

The hand loosened.

From the doorway a leisurely voice observed, "What remarkable methods you employ. I'm taking mental notes."

A svelte, gray-cloaked woman stood in the wash of lamplight, silver hair glistening in a stylish coif atop her crown.

Father muttered something dour and barged his way into the next room.

A low and sparkling laugh sounded, the lady's gloved hand flourishing toward the tear-stained child. "Spill out another glass for the babe in arms. She could stand for some refreshment."

"You'll know bitterness. Oh, you'll know it and use it well. Foster it. Let it eat away your insides until there's naught left but steel and righteous venom. You'll remember my hell-damned words, you dirty crawling maggots."

Maybe it was the way his boots were propped up on the chair. Their cocky attitude exaggerated the callous twist of his pale lip, and the infuriatingly calm and evenly regulated tapping of his thick sole against the hardwood frame could only have frayed further what were already thrashed and shattered nerves.

The boy cried out. In an instant, the boots were clattered to the floorboards and a volley of harsh blows turned his short-lived pleas for justice into broken sobs of pain. The other child threw her arms around the first, expelling a piercing shriek as she sought to screen his smaller form with her own. The rain of fists gave way to a torrent of savage expletives, punctuated at the end with a grating laugh.

The man turned away. His swaggered walk spoke of victory, but she, the elder of the two quivering masses left huddled in the shadowy shop-corner, knew that his victory was found in something more than merely dropping them in agony to their knees. She'd heard enough of his tireless lectures to recognize, here, a plain meaning. Inside her head, something clicked.

In fleeting seconds was that deafness banished. With numbing haziness the murky tones of the orator's speech met her ears and swirled into the inner chambers of her mind. Spinning and tumbling, dispersing and irrevocably intermixing with the thoughts of her own genius, it drowned and overwhelmed the accustomed staid judgment and deliberation of a heretofore attentive intellect. Equilibrium was knocked from its foundation.

A staggered step listed her sideways, and she would have steadied herself on the shoulder of a red-lipped bystander if it had proven under her grasping reach to be more than so much wispy fog. Desperate fingers raking through that spectral frame found no saving grace; she fell heavily to one knee. Above, a garish, tinkling laugh found occasion in the mishap.

"You're as clumsy as me, when I've been in my cups," swelled a blithe voice, urging her back to her feet. "There's a happy girl, there's a good child; dust off, pick up!"

"Who --" Hoarsely formed a whisper in the fallen one's throat, height regained while a trembling finger shot to the platform, "...who is that man? And of what does he speak?"

Discharged with a gregarious beam came a forthright answer: "My son, sweet! Deception, he's called. Never was there a finer man than he, save his father. He speaks of this and that, all and nothing, anything and everything. I couldn't repeat it, really. You'd need a better mind than mine."

The listener crept a hand to her heart, instinctively shielding the organ's faster-moving pulse. "Who, madame, is his father?"

"Why, the great Deceit, of course!" babbled the spiritish presence, plump hands cupping before a motherly breast. "You're not from here, 'tis clear. A wealthy and important man in these parts, he is, though none of us are quite sure how he's managed it. I've never myself deduced his actual occupation, though not for lack of wondering! ...I'm Ignorance! You'll see a lot of me if you tarry about. I do make the rounds, and, in my own way, am quite as influential as my husband is, and much better loved."

Glazing eyes beheld the woman's florid smiles, and only dimly heard was her prattling introduction. Insensibility drove closed the child's heavy weighted lids and the next moment was a startled gasp sounding in the dense gloom of a chilled and lonely bedchamber.

Under the able guidance of practiced hands, contrived with the meticulous tools of an artisan's craft, a sleek and glistering object slowly formed. Beside the oak-topped worktable, an attentive gaze followed every motion, memorizing the precision of each unique movement gleaned of their rapt observation.

"Deceit is a necessary tool," uttered the dark-haired artificer, marking his progeny with a detached flick of cold, soulless eyes. "Dexterity of mind, a shrewd and duplicitous conscience -- as essential to survival as these, your tangible instruments of trade."

A tightness gripped the watcher's chest as that methodical voice fractured the near silence; deep within, the erratic thump of a fast-beating heart declaring a world of instinctive reaction that failed to manifest in the pale visage above. A disciplined nod moved her head in fractional measurement, dry lips mouthing an unheard response.

The inky darkness of a later hour hid the subtle strokes of a damp cloth swept over a thin-faced child's brow; a soothing touch halted now and again by the piteous, half-strangled cries expelled from his tortured slumbering. When morning crept through the lilac-curtained window pane it found two urchin forms crumpled on the bed, hands locked fast together.

"Dreams must be kept," he told her, and despite the heavy layers of meaning those words imparted, she knew, this time at least, exactly what he was referring to.

A dimly lit room. No, an amphitheater, dismal for the grayish fog hanging in the air. Tall and somber, the austerely clad speakers could be made out, each with heavy-footed composure taking by turn their place on the dais. And though the uttering of their mouths shook the very foundations of her soul in reverberation, it was a creeping, frigid silence that met the straining ears of that assembly's audience of one.

"Speak," choked in her throat an unvoiced entreaty, "...and I will listen."