Free Turning Points by Lynn Abbey Page A

known to own or have a stake in several commercial establishments, including, in a lesser part of town, the Vulgar Unicorn. That was a dive he’d had lovingly restored to what it had been before one of the onslaughts of nature that Sanctuary had suffered. The Golden Gourd was his, too, and other places and properties.
    Lone asked, “And what of the man with him? Is he a cripple?”
    The thickset proprietor and supposed owner of The Bottomless Well blinked medium brown eyes. “He walks with a cane, and limps.” The mustache adorning his well-rounded face like a semi-trimmed bramble bush was no minor growth, brown and thick, and always its trailing ends wiggled when he talked. As to his reply, he was always careful with Lone, considering it simple wisdom and perhaps self-protection. The chips on the shoulders of the aptly self-named Lone were big enough to challenge a wood-splitter. While the lad possessed a certain… basic integrity, his opinion of himself was inviolate.
    Lone nodded. “Do you know his name?”
    “Aye. He is Chance. Of the old race, I think.”
    “Ilsigi, like me. But…” Lone was frowning, and on a dusky face with such black eyes under hair as black as the heart of a money changer, that was a sight to give pause even to a bold man. Although Lone was not of the Ilsigi, his idol was, and so Lone called himself. “Are you sure about his name? Maybe he has a nickname?”
    The non-aristocrat named Aristokrates made a small gesture with a ringless hand and tapped his chest with the other in the manner of a devotee of Rander. “His name is Chance, Lone. I have never heard him called anything else.”
    Lone looked disappointed, but said, “When I draw back my hand you will see an earring that came from afar and is not cheap but also not as valuable as it looks. Call it a gift to your wife or your daughter. You choose which, Aris.”
    The taller, meatier man looked down at the object glittering in silver and green on his countertop. His glance around did not seem furtive and yet was. When he saw that no one was looking their way, he made the earring disappear.
    “Falmiria or Esmiria will be grateful, Lone. It is surely worth more than the single cup you just drank.”
    “I said it was a gift.”
    A well-maintained mustache of major proportions writhed with Aristokrates’ smile. “So is the cup you just drank!”
    “Aris!” That, sharply in a female voice, from the kitchen.
    “Ah. His master’s voice,” Lone said.
    Aristokrates rolled his eyes. “Go to hell, Lone.”
    “Be patient,” Lone said with a wink. “Surely I’ll not be making that journey for a while yet!” With that he put on another expression altogether before turning away to stand and pretend to survey everyone. His manner was that of a man of supreme confidence; the commander of an army facing a mob armed with staves.
    The watching Strick’s mutter was only for the ears of his companion. “He seems to have the stance right!”
    Chance snorted. “Well, he knows how to posture!”
    After a couple of minutes of such posturing, Lone swaggered to the door and outside into the darkness, where he seemed to belong. He was heard to snap a curse when a seriously warped plank in the boardwalk paralleling Tumult Street forced him to execute a little hop-skip step. And then he… well, droop-eyed Cajerlain the Twit-chy, lounging at the mouth of Angry Alley not far away, later swore by Theba’s Immortal Crotch that the cat-walking lad just disappeared.
    The woman who stood with her back against a wall while he groped her bore out his story, too.
    A little under an hour later Chance and Strick also settled up and departed amid the tap-step-tap of Chance’s cane and right foot. About a half-block along, one of those embarrassingly little yellow and brown and high-voiced dogs began yip-yapping before they were anywhere near the territory he considered his. His frail-looking little body bounced with each yap.
    “Yip-yap yip-yap yip-yap,”