TRILEMMA GAME

The scrawny woman grins. "No worries, honey. You don't look like my kind of people to mess with." She turns and gestures to follow. "This way. Do you tip?"

It's not quite so easy this time, for whatever reason, but again, a stranger's thoughts and knowledge flood Dahlia's mind. She wonders for an instant whether there might be any kind of side effect to such an excess of knowing.

The woman is well-intentioned and helpful, despite her sketchy appearance. Dahlia remembers the woman playing with a puppy by the docks. The puppy peed on her foot and she splashed her feet off the edge of the dock to wash off the urine.

You get to the Broken Boat no problem, and the scrawny lady opens the door for you. It looks pretty battered. So does the building as a whole; chipped pale bricks and a green tile roof with broken tiles. There's a blank boat-shaped space above the door where you might have expected to see a sign.

Going in, you see the place is moderately populated by people drinking and eating. The scrawny woman follows you in and taps Dahlia's arm; then, nods her head toward a group of three people nearby. "Them are eastern wizards, there," she says, and looks expectantly at Dahlia.

The three people look up at Dahlia with expressions of wary interest.

One is a man of about sixty years, balding, impressively mustached in grey. His eyes are a piercing bright blue color.

Another is a woman of equal age, her grey hair is very neatly braided into a coiled bun atop her head. She wears a silver diadem.

The third is a young man, slender and dark in all respects. His eyes are large and round, with green irises, reminding Dahlia of a frog.

"Of course we're interested," the young man lisps. "Sit down with us, and your companions, too. Pull up chairs."

"What makes you sure these are what you say?" asks the woman with the grey braided hair bun. The little pendant on her silver diadem dangles from her forehead as she leans forward, elbows on the table. She rests her round chin on her fist as she studies Dahlia. "What will make us sure that these are what you say?"

Dwatto moves awkwardly among the tables to you, sets the crate down with a thunk onto the eastern wizards' table, lifts the lid. The faint fluoresence of the Martoi pigment lights the wizards' faces.

"Yeah," breathes the young one, "that's the stuff." He looks to the older two wizards. "We need to confer," he says. But then he says nothing else. Instead, he and the other wizards close their eyes. Their faces relax, go blank. It's as if they're in trance.