Ku'zn of Z'n s'a rode toward the west gate of the inner city of Orania wrapped in a woven feather cloak. It had been a long and dusty trip from the northern continent an uneasy ferry crossing, and an uncomfortable cycle. Her ankles had swollen like water-filled sausages and her back had been sore. She had also been randy the entire time.

Twice bandits had made the fatal mistake of thinking her an easy day's work.

Ku'zn was from the island of Z'n s'a off the west coast of the northern continent. She was tall and leanly muscled, but with sufficient bosom to require binding with a leather halter for comfort when riding or fighting.

Being Z'n, the most startling of her features was her hair. Most Z'n kept their hair short so as not to hinder their swimming. Ku'zn wore her hair in the continental fashion of a travel braid off the right side of her head and reaching to below her waist. The colour was a rich powder blue, just a shade lighter than the fur that covered the rest of her body. The characteristic Z'n fur, which was unique in all the world of Altiva, had a texture that had prompted Ku'zn's non-Z'n lover Tee-Kay to nickname her "Peachfuzz," though he smiled when he said it. In all her travels, she had yet to encounter a peach.

She had high broad cheekbones and a delicate nose that seemed at odds with the sharp, almost masculine set of her jaw. The most dominant of her facial features were her amber eyes with dark green pupils. Despite being tired from a hard day's ride, her penetrating eyes missed nothing around her.

The dirt roads of the outer city gave way to rough cobbles. The four legged antlered war vorn that Ku'zn rode ascended the gentle incline into the old city of Orania. As the shadows grew longer, they also grew more frequent and deeper. The buildings were closer together and afforded cutpurse and cutthroat alike more than ample opportunity for an ambush. Craftdancer, the vorn, acknowledged the possibility with every stamp of his hooves and skittish bleat.

"I know, 'Dancer," she whispered, patting his dull grey neck. "This place has an odd smell about it to me, also. I think we'll collect Ka'wn and leave tonight; I've no desire to sleep within these walls. You can rest tomorrow, old campaigner." She laughed gently and scratched behind his ears, receiving a toss of his head in thanks. "We can all rest tomorrow, the three of us; you, me, and Ka'wn."

Ka'wn, her brother, was the reason for her journey southward. It had been six long years since she and her brother had been sold into contract bondage; Ku'zn to a traveling brothel on the northern continent and Ka'wn to a Kovar religious brothel, a contract house in Orania.

She shuddered to dismiss the images of the legion of miners, soldiers, and fat town clerks who had paid for the privilege of spending an hour beside and atop her in those years. They were images she seldom allowed to surface, but they had returned with increasing frequency during this journey.

"What has it been like for you, little brother," she thought for the hundredth time. "There were times I thought I would never wash them out."

She called up the memory of herself and her brother as youths in Z'n s'a, climbing the sea cliffs to hunt for bird eggs. Once she had slipped and fallen into a cliffhawk's nest crushing the eggs and covering herself with the yolks in the process. Ka'wn, after being sure she was uninjured, had roared with laughter at the comic mess she presented. Then the three meter tall cliff-hawk had returned and the two had barely escaped with their lives, though they had laughed the entire run from the cliff to the waiting outrigger boat. She had smelled of rotten eggs for days and her fur had all but hardened into a shell around her.

"Always so sure, little brother," she thought. "So wise beyond your years. Perhaps you can tell me how to clean myself of this inner stain."

When the Z'n reached the archway to the inner city, the gates were still open with the portcullis raised halfway. The gates would not be closed until the Elder Brother, the larger of Altiva's twin suns, sank below the horizon. Times had been peaceful of late, so no challenge was raised as she rode up. None-the-less, she reined up, ignoring the stares from the tradesmen and townsfolk who were exiting the inner city.

"Which way to the contract house of the Silver Svor?" she yelled through the wide window into the duty room. She could see the dozen or so guardsmen seated at a long food laden table. If there was one thing that four years in a traveling brothel had taught Ku'zn, it was that every guardsman in every city, town, or outpost garrison knew where every contract house within a furlough's ride was located.

The guardsmen looked up from their meal and to a man smiled. By human or Z'n standards, Ku'zn was attractive and so they would all have been delighted to personally show her the way had not their captain spoken first.

"Now why would a lady wish to visit such a pest hole as that?" the captain asked. He was a raw-faced boy in his early twenties whose family had probably bought his commission, but who was doing his best to fill the role to his men's expectations. A lone woman on her way to one of the contract houses was always a source for amusement amongst the guard. After all, it seemed to make no sense at all that a woman should pay for company when they were always free for a little sport.

Ku'zn was in no mood to joke. "Just tell the right way, if you will, Captain, and mind your business." She threw back her cloak to reveal not only most of her body--she wore only her leather halter and a breechclout against the un-seasonably warm weather--but her twin short swords as well, slung for a cross draw from a wide leather and brass girdle.

The captain saw the fur on her arms ripple as she tensed with annoyance and thought better of making sport of the Z'n. The rumble of voices from behind him, however, compelled him to bravado. "The safety of the citizens is my business, Warrior, and I will know why you enter Orania armed."

Ku'zn realized that bickering with the guards was not going to help her find her brother any more quickly, so she forced a smile. "I am going to meet a friend at the Silver Svor, Captain, and then I will be leaving your city as fast as possible."

"The house you seek is on the Street of Fountains," the captain said. "Ten streets straight toward the Temple of Survivors then, uh, turn right for five streets. You'll recognize the district, I'm sure," he added with an implied sneer, bringing a chuckle from his men, but bowed courteously enough to allow Ku'zn no justification to draw steel.

"Thank you, Captain," she said, and urged her vorn forward into the gloom of the walled city. As she did, she made a mental note to be particularly rude to the guardsmen on her way out with Ka'wn. "Let that city-bred lout cast his sneers at me with you riding beside me, little brother," she thought. "With you to guard my back, I'll take them all on."

Ku'zn rode through the narrow streets with her arms crossed, hands resting on the hilts of her swords. She guided her mount with her knees. Lights were visible in the houses and shops to either side, but all was strangely silent and the streets deserted. Craftdancer's hooves clacked overloud on the dirty cobbles and echoed off the wattle and daub of the overhanging second stories that seemed to have brought an early twilight.

It was a perfect place for an ambush. She readied herself for any attack. The Z'n warrior shifted her shoulders to readjust the weight of the coin-filled leather backpack she wore hidden beneath her cape. The money was the last two years' hard wages. She had earned it working as a bodyguard and escort after the woman who held her contract had been killed, leaving Ku'zn free. It would buy her brother's freedom two years short of his contract release date.

It would mean they could go home, together.

Ku'zn had worn the backpack night and day the entire trip down from the north continent. Its weight made her feel closer to her brother and provided some consolation for the fact that she dare not contract for a night's companionship while she possessed the money. In some ways, it had been the hardest part of the trip--the aloneness after two years of constant companionship with Tee-Kay, Erique the Kovar priest, and her former bond sisters Lunit and Yomi.

The five had traveled and lived together performing weapons displays or taking in wash when there was not a war to be fought or merchant to escort from town to town. They became a family for her, so far from the welcoming shore of Z'n s'a and so unlike her blood family, but a comfort to her soul, none-the-less. There had been times they were hungry, but she never wanted for warmth at night, or passion. She came to rely on any of them to guard her back and had learned much from them about continental customs and the world.

At night, though, even with Tee-Kay's strong arms about her, she thought of Ka'wn, of how lonely he must be. And she knew that no matter how content she might be with the group, she had to find her brother and free him.

"A brut for poor Skratch?" A voice from the shadows startled Ku'zn from her reverie and she brought Craftdancer to an abrupt halt. "Just a sem, perhaps to sooth your conscience and my stomach at the same time?" A ragged, comically pathetic figure detached itself from the shadows and came toward Ku'zn with an odd shambling gait. It appeared to be a young boy, blonde, shaggy haired and covered in an amazing variety of rags. Beneath a layer of dirt, the boy smiled a pleasant, crooked smile and said again, "Just a brut for poor Skratch, please." He held out a long wooden ladle to make it convenient for the Z'n to drop a coin into without dismounting.

Ku'zn thought first to pass him by, but on impulse asked, "Do I go the correct way to the contract house of the Silver Svor?"

"Oh no, obviously affluent warrior," Skratch said. "This way will lead to the street of slavers. If you continue this way you shall surely be accosted by tvekheads and cutpurses. It's not a nice neighborhood at all. You should have turned left at the Temple of the Survivors. The Silver Svor is just a block or so that way." He wiggled his ladle in the air to remind her it was empty and smiled disarmingly.

Ku'zn smiled too, but it was a dark smile foretelling suffering for a certain captain of the guard. "Here you go, Skratch," she said, dropping a coin into the ladle. "Hope only that you are truthful, beggar," she added as she wheeled Craftdancer about, "or I shall be back."

The beggar watched her ride away while he examined the coin then addressed his ladle. "Come, Scoop, tonight we feast." He tucked the ladle though a rope at his waist and shambled off into the shadows again but with his head held high like a triumphant warrior-king.

The device of the Silver Svor was where the beggar said it would be, a garish tin cutout of the herd animal svor swinging creakily in the twilight breeze. The building it hung from was indistinguishable from those around it in size or opulence: a wood and brick first floor. It appeared chipped and weather worn in the fading light. The second floor was of wattle and daub with wide oilpaper windows behind which she could see movement. The low front door was of rare Ovarwood. Altivan law universally declared only the front doors of inns could be made of the wood, so the contract house served both purposes.

Soon, little brother, Ku'zn thought as she dismounted and tied Craftdancer to a rail out front, "Very soon." She conjured an image of him as he had been, a head shorter than she, but with shoulders twice as wide and feet that seemed too large for his legs to carry. You will have grown into a man, she thought, and I will be proud. She tried to imagine what he must look like now, but she kept seeing his foolish teenager's grin and perpetually ruffled fur. "The time for imagining is past," she said. With a muttered prayer to her dead blood mother, Ku'zn stepped through the door that marked her journey's end.

The first thing that struck Ku'zn about the Silver Svor was how very different it was from any contract house she had ever seen in the north. The iron bound door opened into a great hall like a tavern's main room. There was a crowded bar to one side and a number of tables scattered in the shadowed corners. That was where the resemblance to northern houses ended.

On one side of the large room, atop a low stage, a very fat man was suspended upside down from a wooden frame. Behind the man, a bored looking woman attired in a lizard skin costume that emphasized her sexuality stood on a raised dais. She wielded a vicious looking whip.

Each time the whip struck the fat man's buttocks his whole body spasmed and the crowd of onlookers cheered and laughed while the fat man's red face went from anticipation to ecstasy.

Ku'zn turned away, both appalled and amused by the spectacle. Off to the right a wide curtained arch accessed a second room adjoining the main one. The light was dim, but the room was lit well enough to see that it was strewn with pillows and packed with naked writhing bodies in every manner of sexual connection: man and woman, woman and woman, and man and man.

Nowhere, however, did she spy the blue furred physique of her brother.

Ku'zn turned away, searching the room for a priest-writer of the house, the person from whom she would purchase her brother's freedom. She tried to focus her thoughts on her mission, but the sights and most insistently the smells of the place began to heat the fire in her own loins.

Curse it for a Fansav, she thought. I've no time to coddle myself with a warm body, especially not in this place. She wrinkled her nose in distaste as if the action could block the miasma and the sexual memory. "I've let myself grow too soft in my time with Erique and Tee-Kay. I must find my Z'n keth kur (heart-of-stone) once again or I shall never survive a journey home. 'A Z'n is made of sea and rock'." She quoted the old saying with very little conviction; for a rock she was very damp with stifled passion.

"Your pleasure, Madam Warrior?"

Ku'zn started at a voice behind her. She turned to see a young Orian girl, wearing white robes embroidered with the triple diamond symbol of the Kovar religion. The girl had long black hair and fair skin, both relatively uncommon in a southerner. She also had such innocent trusting eyes and so disarming a smile that Ku'zn found her incongruous amongst so much debauchery.

The girl misunderstood Ku'zn's stare. "Would you like to take me to a private room," the girl asked, "or would you prefer--"

"No, no, girl," the Z'n said, "I want to speak with a priest-writer."

"This way, then, Madam Warrior." The girl nodded. Ku'zn detected a note of disappointment in girl's voice.

"I am becoming ruder than a usurer," Ku'zn admonished herself, "and to such a child." As a courtesy she said, "Perhaps another time, child; now, I've got but one thought." The teenager offered a shy smile as reward for the attempt at appeasement.

The girl led Ku'zn through the pillowed room. Even world wise Ku'zn was surprised at the diversity of ways the Orians were occupied. "Have you Orians always been so ... so uninhibited in your contract pleasures?"

The girl's attitude gave Ku'zn reason to believe she was pleased for the chance at conversation. "Oh, no, Madam Warrior, though it has always been so for my time here. Priest-writer Yulmin says it was much quieter before the plague."

"Plague?"

"The Century Plague which killed so many fifteen months ago." The girl looked at Ku'zn incredulously. "You don't know about the plague?"

"I heard some talk about it on my ride down," Ku'zn said, "but no one seemed very willing to go into detail."

"It's an old plague, they say," the girl explained. "But it happens only when the gods are displeased, or so they say. Yulmin tells me the gods have nothing to do with it; she says it's Warp Wizards. But she blames everything on Warp Wizards."

"Just what is this plague?"

"It takes a hundred hours from the time you get the plague until you--" She puffed her cheeks out to resemble a bloated face to illustrate the effects of the plague. "I was a kid when it was around, but Yulmin says everyone decided old rules didn't matter, 'cause nothing could stop the plague. But when it was over, a bunch of people built the Temple of the Survivors anyway and claimed that Morsa the Forgiving was the God who stopped it. Yulmin says it's just a way for them to make money. I think so too."

"What happened to end the plague?"

"Oh," the girl said with an expression of sagacity. "People just stopped dying. Who knows why the gods do anything?"

The girl led the Z'n to a platform, at the back of the orgy room. There a plump white-haired woman, in a purple version of robes the girl wore, sat sipping spiced wine.

"What is it now, Alma?" the woman asked in an annoyed tone.

"This traveler seeks a contract, priest-writer, Yulmin." The girl, Alma, spoke in the stilted tone of a formal dialect and Ku'zn realized for the first time that Alma was not wearing a Linguaring, The Crystalsmith provided device allowed it's wearer to understand any spoken language on Altiva. Since the girl was not wearing one it meant the girl had been speaking Z'n for their entire conversation, and with no accent.

The priest-writer, who did wear a ring, turned to face Ku'zn. She was a head shorter than the Z'n and up close her eyes looked like two copper coins pushed into bread dough. "What contract can I write for you?" she asked in a throaty voice that was almost a growl. "Would you like a man?" She smiled a pleasant store-bought smile.

"I don't want a man," the Z'n said.

"A woman then?"

"No, a boy who--"

"We have boys, too," the priest said. "Some who do amazing things. Any kind you want."

Stupid cow, Ku'zn thought. To be so close and then delayed by an idiot! She conjured an image of Ka'wn's smiling face and it calmed her.

"I want a Z'n boy," Ku'zn said.

The priest-writer furrowed her brow with false concern, which made Ku'zn think of a cake that had failed to rise. "Now why would you want that?" Yulmin asked in an approximation of a motherly tone. "A pretty little continental boy is just as good and there's no need to take precautions, eh?" She gave a sly wink, as if the inability for a continental to father a child by a Z'n was some special secret of the sisterhood. "Those pessers are such an annoyance," she continued. "In fact I have just the lad for you--lasts forever. Alma, run along and fetch--"

"No!" Ku'zn lost her patience and shouted loud enough that Alma jumped back and several patrons nearby took notice. "I don't want a continental; I want Ka'wn."

Yulmin looked puzzled. "Ka'wn, the Z'n boy? Dearie, where have you been? Ka'wn was one of the last ones to die with the plague. Almost two fifteen months ago!"

The room spun around Ku'zn and her grasp on reality begin to slip away. "You're lying," she insisted after a moment, but her own voice seemed to come from miles away.

"Ask around for yourself, Warrior," Yulmin said. "Anyone will tell you."

"He's here," Ku'zn whispered. "Where are you hiding him? What have you done with my brother?" She stepped forward and grabbed Yulmin by her robes.

Yulmin saw the look in Ku'zn's eye and knew enough not to argue. She motioned to two burly Umbrian bouncers who had been watching the exchange from the shadows. The men moved to either side of the Z'n with rehearsed casualness and simultaneously seized her arms.

Ku'zn was only aware of the men through a red haze. Her entire consciousness was focused on the image of her brother smiling at her from memory.

"Okay, Warrior," one of the Umbrians whispered, "let's take a walk." The pair increased pressure on her arms and started to pull her away from the priest-writer.

Ku'zn reacted instinctively. She hopped back and landed with both heels, crushing the insteps of the inside foot of each of the Umbrians. She side kicked the knee of the man to her right and pulled free one hand to deliver a strike the throat of the man on her left.

Both men dropped, writhing on the floor in agony.

"Where is my brother?" Ku'zn bellowed, pulling the priest-writer off the ground. "Tell me!"

Suddenly Ku'zn heard a whoosing sound to her right and turned her head just in time to see a spittoon, wielded by Alma, coming straight at her face. The last thought the Z'n had before darkness overwhelmed her was, I am coming to be with you, Ka'wn. My journey is at an end.