Triplet

After the unassuming way house in Kelaine City on Shamsheer she'd expected something equally modest here. It was a shock to find Melentha's "house" built more along the lines of a mansion.

Three stories high, with a gleaming white exterior, it was surrounded by a large lawn in which squat green bushes and patches of brightly colored flowers had been laid out in a careful arrangement.

More trees blocked the views from north and east; other trees grew in clumps elsewhere on the grounds. Surrounding the house and most of the lawn was a rough square of posts set into the ground perhaps five meters apart.

Danae had seen far larger and more impressive homes before... but in the richer sections of her home world of Arcadia they hadn't looked at all out of place. This one, in the middle of Karyx, most emphatically did. "Nice place," she said cautiously. "A little—uh—ostentatious, though, isn't it? I'd think it would draw bandits like moths."

"It can attract them all it wants," she said blandly. "Actually, it's rather fun to watch a band of them trying to get in."

Beside Danae, Ravagin swore under his breath. "The post line. Esporla-meenay."

Danae's teeth clamped tightly together. For just a second each post had been sheathed in green light... "Bound demons," she breathed. "One in each post."

"Actually there's only a single demon," Melentha said, pointing to the free-standing archway toward which they were heading. "The ones in the rest of the pillars are his parasite spirits. It's why I used a demon in the first place—you can get a whole legion for the price of one entrapment," she added, looking at Ravagin as if expecting another lecture on the dangers of demon-binding.

But Ravagin merely nodded, his eyes on the archway. Danae followed his gaze... and as they neared it she saw what he'd already spotted: an evil caricature of a human face carved into the keystone, its deep-set eyes watching them with u

Or perhaps it wasn't a carving at all. Perhaps it was the actual visage of the trapped demon, impressed into the stone as a side effect of the spell binding the spirit there.

Shuddering, Danae averted her eyes, and watched the ground beneath them as they rode single file through the arch. The unpleasant tingle she felt was almost certainly just her imagination.

They left the horses at a small stable hidden within one of the groups of trees and walked across the lawn toward the main house. The flowers, Danae noted in passing, were extremely delicate things, alive with buzzing insects, while the squat bushes were rich in oddly shaped berries. She wondered briefly if they were edible, decided that since the info packet hadn't mentioned them they probably weren't.

The interior of the house did nothing to spoil the majestic effect of its exterior. Here again Danae had seen better, but it was no less impressive even held against those memories. The main floor contained a library filled with rough leather-bound volumes, a kitchen that was spotless despite the primitive cooking implements, two large conversation rooms where scattered cushions seemed to serve as chairs, and—surely an oddity on Karyx—an inside bathroom. Another chamber, down the hall from the conversation rooms, was closed off. Melentha didn't offer to show that one; taking the hint, Danae didn't ask.

The guest bedrooms and a double bathroom were on the second floor. "This will be your room,"

Melentha told Danae, leading the way into an airy room on one of the front corners of the house.

"I'm sorry I can't offer you one with a private bathroom, but I decided against building the house like that. You have to remember that even having the things indoors is somewhat radical here, and I can't afford to be too far out of step."

"Sure," Danae nodded, stepping to one of the south-facing windows and moving aside the gauze curtain. The lawn, with all its splashes of color, was visible below... as was the archway with the trapped demon. "This is fine—much nicer than I was expecting from Karyx, certainly. If I may ask, how in the worlds do you handle the, uh, mechanics of the bathrooms?"

"It's perfectly simple," Melentha shrugged. "I've got a couple of large water tanks on the third floor that feed into the showers—a bound nixie keeps them filled for me and there's a firebrat in one to heat it. I don't suppose you've ever seen an old-style flush toilet?—well, trust me, they're noisy but perfectly adequate. Another tank holds water for that purpose; the wastes run down pipes to an underground chamber where three firebrats under a dji

"Clever," Danae murmured.

"Straightforward, really," Melentha said. "There's a lot you can accomplish on Karyx if you have even a vague conception of science to complement your spirithandling."

"As long as you don't let it run away with you," Ravagin spoke up from the other side of the room, where he was peering out one of the windows facing east. "Too much and you'll attract attention from the locals. How many of them are you employing here, incidentally?"

"Just four," Melentha said, face hardening again. "All but one leave at night, and the fourth has a small room off the kitchen. The rules do permit me to hire locals, you know."

Ravagin turned back to her. "I'm aware of that," he said mildly. "How many other visitors do you have at the moment?"

"One group; five men, two women. They're out at Findral at the moment, not due back until tomorrow, and then they're due to leave. No one else, though of course I can't ever be sure when someone will drop in."

Ravagin nodded and shifted his attention to Danae. "Will you be wanting to do your studies here in Besak, or would you prefer to pick a different village?"

It was surprisingly difficult for Danae to force her mind back onto what was by now a very familiar track. Such esoteric concepts as statistics and psychological comp/correlation seemed jarringly out of place in such a setting. "No, Besak will be fine," she managed. "Though I'd like to try working up a correlation of attitudes in Findral or Torralane Village, too, if we have the time."

"Thought about how you're going to go about it?" he asked.

"More or less." She looked at Melentha. "I plan to offer either a brand-new item or an improvement on an existing one to the merchants and people of Besak—I'll want to discuss with you later which of my possibilities would be best received."

Melentha frowned. "What do you expect to prove?"

"It should give me a measure of their receptiveness to new things; and since I'll also be offering a spirit-enhanced version of the same item, I'll get at least a preliminary reading on their feelings toward the use of bound spirits. I'll need your help for the binding spells, of course."

"Um," Melentha grunted, clearly not impressed. "Sure, all right, I'll give you whatever help you need."

"Thanks," Danae said, giving the other a tentative smile. Getting on better terms with the woman couldn't hurt, and would probably help in the long run. "When do you want to sit down and discuss it?"

"Tonight," Melentha said promptly. "I have some things that need to be done before sundown, and you ought to take some time to orient yourself anyway. Maybe go into Besak and have a look around

—I can give you one of my people as a guide if you want."

Danae glanced at Ravagin. "You know the way around Besak, don't you?"

"Well enough," he replied. "Though we might need one of Melentha's employees to get back in through the post line."

"Oh. Right." Danae shivered at the memory of that inhuman face.

But Melentha shook her head. "There'll be no problem with that. I'll just instruct the demon that you're my guests and have free access to the house and grounds. It's as simple as that." Stepping across the room, she opened a sliding panel to reveal a well-stocked closet. "If you're going to pass yourself off as a trader in bound-spirit goods, you'll need to change into something more appropriate to your station," she said, locating an intricately embroidered robe and holding it out for Danae's inspection. "This one will give you instant attention—I got it from a traderess from Coven, and it bears their emblem." She indicated a series of golden threads weaving in and out of the metallic redand- blue pattern tracking diagonally across the robe's front.