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Arclath was much of an age with his two palace friends and knew they might be stiffly mortified—or trying to seem so—for the first few drinks, but would be hungrily watching thereafter. By the Dragon, the dancers were beautiful and skilled enough that he loved to watch them, and he could hire his pick of lasses anywhere in the city or enjoy the company of many an ambitious beauty for free, purely on the strength of being Lord Delcastle. Yet he loved to watch here as hungrily as the next man.

Mask dancers had been the rage in Suzail for less than three summers, but it was a fury that, as far as Arclath was concerned, could last forever. Some began their dances clothed, and others didn’t bother, but always their faces were hidden behind grotesque, long-beaked, birdlike masks. These lasses danced on raised stages, almost—but never quite—touching the front-row patrons.

Tress was already smilingly showing the men to Arclath’s usual table, right in front of the club’s lone half-oval stage. She was the owner of the Dragonriders’ and more properly known as “Mistress,” but it had been two years since Arclath had heard even a Watch patrol address her thus. Just “Tress” she was, to everyone. She was tall, urbane, and always clad in leathers that made her resemble some bard’s fancy of what a sexy, wingless, humanoid dragon might look like. But she never danced on the stage, and there was no backroom door with any mark of a dragon on it. He’d looked.

She patted Arclath’s shoulder like an old friend, murmuring, “Your guests, Lord?”

“Of course,” he smilingly assured her. “And I do believe they’re as thirsty as you are strikingly beautiful, high lady!”

“Flatterer,” she purred fondly, gliding away to fetch some decanters herself, rather than signaling her maids.

The two uneasy, blushing young men sitting beside Arclath might have bolted from their seats right back out into the street if they’d had the slightest idea how much Tress knew about them at a glance, though they’d never darkened her doors before. She caught Arclath’s eye as she came back with the wine, interpreted his grin and slight shake of his head correctly, and did not address either of his companions by name.

Even as she smilingly called them “saers,” and bent over them to give them their choice of wine and a pleasant view of the dragon she’d painted sinuously arising from her cleavage, the owner of the Dragonriders’ knew the paler, thinner one in plain street tunic and breeches with the black curly hair was the young but dedicated Wizard of War Belnar Buckmantle. While the slightly larger, agile, and darkly handsome man in palace chamberjack’s livery was Halance Dustrin Tarandar, an amiable courtier of low rank but longtime, trusted service. It was the business of many club owners to know faces and names. For one thing, it prevented husbands and wives from encountering each other unexpectedly and unpleasantly when they were availing themselves of a club’s services to temporarily forget each other. For another, it kept inferiors and superiors in common service from seeing each other to the embarrassment—or worse—of both. It was also always handy to know when a senior courtier or a noble was in the house and not wanting to be recognized. It was even more useful to know when a wizard of war was visiting. Or several war wizards, especially if their faces warned that they might be ready for trouble and expecting it.

The style of Tarandar’s uniform sleeve told any Suzailan who cared about such things that he was a senior chamberjack, head of a duty of eight chamberjacks, the fetch-and-carry men who ran errands, delivered messages and small items about the palace, moved furniture as required, announced guests entering a chamber, and guided visitors through the chambers of state. The crook of the smile on Tress’s face told Arclath she regarded Tarandar as a fellow underappreciated and underpaid toiler in personal service to the too often ungrateful. If that smile had been a comment, it would have been “Poor lad.