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path smooth again. Such a thing would have never occurred to him had he not seen it for himself, he thought, amazed. The cart drew up before the house now. He had no time to observe but that it had a rotunda over the main entrance, before a servant stepped forward to help him from his transport and usher him into the building. He was taken to a wide marble bench in the rotunda, and told to sit. Before him was a rectangular pool at one end of which was a bronze boy on a dolphin. Water spouted gently from the fish’s mouth. There were green water hyacinths floating in the pool.
    “Someone will come for you when the master can see you,” the servant said, and then he was gone.
    John Swiftsword sat. The day was warm. He was thirsty, and had had nothing to eat as he had departed early from his hovel. First he had gone to the armorer to be measured for the suit of armor he would need, and then he had walked across the City to the Golden District. A cup of water would have been nice, he considered, but John Swiftsword knew he was of little importance, and would be offered no refreshment. He waited. He was startled when a small goldfish leaped up from the pool, splashing back down into the water. The sun reached its zenith, and poured into the rotunda. The air was still, and it grew hot. He struggled not to doze in the still heat. It had not seemed so warm in the City outside of the Golden District this morning. And then finally a man came forward, and spoke to John.
    “I am one of Gaius Prospero’s secretaries. You will come with me.” He turned without waiting for any reply. John stood and quickly followed the man into a side hallway, down its length and into a large room. “Wait here,” the secretary said, and disappeared through a door at the end of the room.
    John Swiftsword stood quietly. In the center of the room was a great round black-and-gold-flecked marble table with solid gold legs that had gold balls and claw feet. Upon the table was a great round polished stone vase from which a colorful arrangement of exotic blooms spilled. One side of the room was an open colonnade, and beyond it a small garden. He would have liked to have looked into that garden, but he dared not move. His manners, for he did have them, overcame his curiosity.
    “Come this way,” the secretary’s voice snapped, breaking his reverie.
    He was ushered into another large room where sitting at a long marble table was the man he had come to see, for it could only be Gaius Prospero in that thronelike chair.
    “You may go, Jonah,” Gaius Prospero told the secretary. Then he looked at John Swiftsword.
    The mercenary bowed politely, and waited for the Master of the Merchants to speak. You did not speak unless spoken to by a great man, he knew.
    “So you are to become a Crusader Knight,” Gaius Prospero began.
    “I should like to, but nothing is certain, my lord, as you surely know,” the mercenary replied.
    “It should please me if you did” came the surprising reply. “And there are others who agree with me. Your battle skills are legend, John Swiftsword. The Order of Crusader Knights is where you rightfully belong.”
    “Thank you, my lord,” John said.
    “This will be, of course, about your decision to sell me your beautiful daughter,” Gaius Prospero began the negotiation.
    “Yes, my lord,” John replied.
    “I had your wife remove her garment. She is exquisitely made. Every Pleasure House in the City will want her. The bidding will be unprecedented. And I had my physician validate her virginity. I am pleased that she is fully intact. Her first-night rights will bring her owner a fortune.” He smiled. “And she is half faerie, if I understood your wife correctly?”
    His temples were throbbing. They had stripped his daughter of her clothing to examine her? They had probed her innocence? He blinked back the bloodred in his eyes, swallowed hard and said, “Yes, my lord. Her mother was a faerie woman called Ilona. She was my first