Shainsa, first in the chain of Dry-towns that lie in the bed of a
long-dried ocean, is set at the center of a great alkali plain; a dusty,
parched city bleached by a million years of sun. The houses are high,
spreading buildings with many rooms and wide windows. The poorer sort
were made of sun-dried brick, the more imposing being cut from the
bleached salt stone of the cliffs that rise behind the city.
News travels fast in the Dry-towns. If Rakhal were in the city, he'd
soon know that I was here, and guess who I was or why I'd come. I might
disguise myself so that my own sister, or the mother who bore me, would
not know me. But I had no illusions about my ability to disguise myself
from Rakhal. He had created the disguise that was me.
When the second sun set, red and burning, behind the salt cliffs, I knew
he was not in Shainsa, but I stayed on, waiting for something to happen.
At night I slept in a cubbyhole behind a wineshop, paying an inordinate
price for that very dubious privilege. And every day in the sleepy
silence of the blood-red noon I paced the public square of Shainsa.
This went on for four days. No one took the slightest notice of another
nameless man in a shabby shirtcloak, without name or identity or known
business. No one appeared to see me except the dusty children, with pale
fleecy hair, who played their patient games on the windswept curbing of
the square. They surveyed my scarred face with neither curiosity or
fear, and it occurred to me that Rindy might be such another as these.
If I had still been thinking like an Earthman, I might have tried to
question one of the children, or win their confidence. But I had a
deeper game in hand.
On the fifth day I was so much a fixture that my pacing went unnoticed
even by the children. On the gray moss of the square, a few
dried-looking old men, their faces as faded as their shirtcloaks and
bearing the knife scars of a hundred forgotten fights, drowsed on the
stone benches. And along the flagged walk at the edge of the square, as
suddenly as an autumn storm in the salt flats, a woman came walking.
She was tall, with a proud swinging walk, and a metallic clashing kept
rhythm to her swift steps. Her arms were fettered, each wrist bound with
a jeweled bracelet and the bracelets linked together by a long,
silver-gilt chain passed through a silken loop at her waist. From the
loop swung a tiny golden padlock, but in the lock stood an even tinier
key, signifying that she was a higher caste than her husband or consort,
that her fettering was by choice and not command.
She stopped directly before me and raised her arm in formal greeting
like a man. The chain made a tinkling sound in the hushed square as her
other hand was pulled up tight against the silken loop at her waist. She
stood surveying me for some moments, and finally I raised my head and
returned her gaze. I don't know why I had expected her to have hair like
spun black glass and eyes that burned with a red reflection of the
burning star.
This woman's eyes were darker than the poison-berries of the salt
cliffs, and her mouth was a cut berry that looked just as dangerous. She
was young, the slimness of her shoulders and the narrow steel-chained
wrists told me how very young she was, but her face had seen weather and
storms, and her dark eyes had weathered worse psychic storms than that.
She did not flinch at the sight of my scars, and met my gaze without
dropping her eyes.
"You are a stranger. What is your business in Shainsa?"
I met the direct question with the insolence it demanded, hardly moving
my lips. "I have come to buy women for the brothels of Ardcarran.
Perhaps when washed you might be suitable. Who could arrange for your
sale?"
She took the rebuke impassively, though the bitter crimson of her mouth
twitched a little in mischief or rage. But she made no sign. The battle
was joined between us, and I knew already that it would be fought to the
end.
From somewhere in her draperies, something fell to the ground with a
little tinkle. But I knew that trick too and I did not move. Finally she
went away without bending to retrieve it and when I looked around I saw
that all the fleece-haired children had stolen away, leaving their
playthings lying on the curbing. But one or two of the gaffers on the
stone benches, who were old enough to show curiosity without losing
face, were watching me with impassive eyes.
I could have asked the woman's name then, but I held back, knowing it
could only lessen the prestige I had gained from the encounter. I
glanced down, without seeming to do so, at the tiny mirror which had
fallen from the recesses of the fur robe. Her name might have been
inscribed on the reverse.
But I left it lying there to be picked up by the children when they
returned, and went back to the wineshop. I had accomplished my first
objective; if you can't be inconspicuous, be so damned conspicuous that
nobody can miss you. And that in itself is a fair concealment. How many
people can accurately describe a street riot?
I was finishing off a bad meal with a stone bottle of worse wine when
the _chak_ came in, disregarding the proprietor, and made straight for
me. He was furred immaculately white. His velvet muzzle was contracted
as if the very smells might soil it, and he kept a dainty paw
outstretched to ward off accidental contact with greasy counters or
tables or tapestries. His fur was scented, and his throat circled with a
collar of embroidered silk. This pampered minion surveyed me with the
innocent malice of an uninvolved nonhuman for merely human intrigues.
"You are wanted in the Great House of Shanitha, thcarred man." He spoke
the Shainsa dialect with an affected lisp. "Will it pleathe you, come
wis' me?"
I came, with no more than polite protest, but was startled. I had not
expected the encounter to reach the Great House so soon. Shainsa's Great
House had changed hands four times since I had last been in Shainsa. I
wasn't overly anxious to appear there.
The white _chak_, as out of place in the rough Dry-town as a jewel in
the streets or a raindrop in the desert, led me along a winding
boulevard to an outlying district. He made no attempt to engage me in
conversation, and indeed I got the distinct impression that this
cockscomb of a nonhuman considered me well beneath his notice. He seemed
much more aware of the blowing dust in the street, which ruffled and
smudged his carefully combed fur.
The Great House was carved from blocks of rough pink basalt, the entry
guarded by two great caryatids enwrapped in chains of carved metal, set
somehow into the surface of the basalt. The gilt had long ago worn away
from the chains so that it alternately gleamed gold or smudged base
metal. The caryatids were patient and blind, their jewel-eyes long
vanished under a hotter sun than today's.
The entrance hall was enormous. A Terran starship could have stood
upright inside it, was my first impression, but I dismissed that thought
quickly; any Terran thought was apt to betray me. But the main hall was
built on a scale even more huge, and it was even colder than the
legendary hell of the _chaks_. It was far too big for the people in it.
There was a little solar heater in the ceiling, but it didn't help much.
A dim glow came from a metal brazier but that didn't help much either.
The _chak_ melted into the shadows, and I went down the steps into the
hall by myself, feeling carefully for each step with my feet and trying
not to seem to be doing so. My comparative night-blindness is the only
significant way in which I really differ from a native Wolfan.
There were three men, two women and a child in the room. They were all
Dry-towners and had an obscure family likeness, and they all wore rich
garments of fur dyed in many colors. One of the men, old and stooped and
withered, was doing something to the brazier. A slim boy of fourteen was
sitting cross-legged on a pile of cushions in the corner. There was
something wrong with his legs.
A girl of ten in a too-short smock that showed long spider-thin legs
above her low leather boots was playing with some sort of shimmery
crystals, spilling them out into patterns and scooping them up again
from the uneven stones of the floor. One of the women was a fat, creased
slattern, whose jewels and dyed furs did not disguise her greasy
slovenliness.
Her hands were unchained, and she was biting into a fruit which dripped
red juice down the rich blue fur of her robe. The old man gave her a
look like murder as I came in, and she straightened slightly but did not
discard the fruit. The whole room had a curious look of austere,
dignified poverty, to which the fat woman was the only discordant note.
But it was the remaining man and woman who drew my attention, so that I
noticed the others only peripherally, in their outermost orbit. One was
Kyral, standing at the foot of the dais and glowering at me.
The other was the dark-eyed woman I had rebuked today in the public
square.
Kyral said, "So it's you." And his voice held nothing. Not rebuke, not
friendliness or a lack of it, not even hatred.
Nothing.
There was only one way to meet it. I faced the girl--she was sitting on
a thronelike chair next to the fat woman, and looked like a doe next to
a pig--and said boldly, "I assume this summons to mean that you informed
your kinsmen of my offer."
She flushed, and that was triumph enough. I held back the triumph,
however, wary of overconfidence. The gaffer laughed the high cackle of
age, and Kyral broke in with a sharp, angry monosyllable by which I knew
that my remark had indeed been repeated, and had lost nothing in the
telling. But only the line of his jaw betrayed the anger as he said
calmly, "Be quiet, Dallisa. Where did you pick this up?"
I said boldly, "The Great House has changed rulers since last I smelled
the salt cliffs. Newcomers do not know my name and theirs is unknown to
me."
The old gaffer said thinly to Kyral, "Our name has lost _kihar_. One
daughter is lured away by the Toymaker and another babbles with
strangers in the square, and a homeless no-good of the streets does not
know our name."
My eyes, growing accustomed to the dark blaze of the brazier, saw that
Kyral was biting his lip and scowling. Then he gestured to a table where
an array of glassware was set, and at the gesture, the white _chak_ came
on noiseless feet and poured wine.
"If you have no blood-feud with my family, will you drink with me?"
"I will," I said, relaxing. Even if he had associated the trader with
the scarred Earthman of the spaceport, he seemed to have decided to drop
the matter. He seemed startled, but he waited until I had lifted the
glass and taken a sip. Then, with a movement like lightning, he leaped
from the dais and struck the glass from my lips.
I staggered back, wiping my cut mouth, in a split-second juggling
possibilities. The insult was terrible and deadly. I could do nothing
now but fight. Men had been murdered in Shainsa for far less. I had come
to settle one feud, not involve myself in another, but even while these
lightning thoughts flickered in my mind, I had whipped out my skean and
I was surprised at the shrillness of my own voice.
"You contrive offense beneath your own roof--"
"Spy and renegade!" Kyral thundered. He did not touch his skean. From
the table he caught a long four-thonged whip, making it whistle through
the air. The long-legged child scuttled backward. I stepped back one
pace, trying to conceal my desperate puzzlement. I could not guess what
had prompted Kyral's attack, but whatever it was, I must have made some
bad mistake and could count myself lucky to get out of there alive.
Kyral's voice perceptibly trembled with rage. "You dare to come into my
own home after I have tracked you to the Kharsa and back, blind fool
that I was! But now you shall pay."
The whip sang through the air, hissing past my shoulders. I dodged to
one side, retreating step by step as Kyral swung the powerful thongs. It
cracked again, and a pain like the burning of red-hot irons seared my
upper arm. My skean rattled down from numb fingers.
The whip whacked the floor.
"Pick up your skean," said Kyral. "Pick it up if you dare." He poised
the lash again.
The fat woman screamed.
I stood rigid, gauging my chances of disarming him with a sudden leap.
Suddenly the girl Dallisa leaped from her seat with a harsh musical
chiming of chains.
"Kyral, no! No, Kyral!"
He moved slightly, but did not take his eyes from me. "Get back,
Dallisa."
"No! Wait!" She ran to him and caught his whip-arm, dragging it down,
and spoke to him hurriedly and urgently. Kyral's face changed as she
spoke; he drew a long breath and threw the whip down beside my skean on
the floor.
"Answer straight, on your life. What are you doing in Shainsa?"
I could hardly take it in that for the moment I was reprieved from
sudden death, from being beaten into bloody death there at Kyral's feet.
The girl went back to her thronelike chair. Now I must either tell the
truth or a convincing lie, and I was lost in a game where I didn't know
the rules. The explanation I thought might get me out alive might be the
very one which would bring down instant and painful death. Suddenly,
with a poignancy that was almost pain, I wished Rakhal were standing
here at my side.
But I had to bluff it out alone.
If they had recognized me for Race Cargill, the Terran spy who had often
been in Shainsa, they might release me--it was possible, I supposed,
that they were Terran sympathizers. On the other hand, Kyral's shouts of
"Spy, renegade!" seemed to suggest the opposite.
I stood trying to ignore the searing pain in my lashed arm, but I knew
that blood was running hot down my shoulder. Finally I said, "I came to
settle blood-feud."
Kyral's lips thinned in what might have been meant for a smile. "You
shall, assuredly. But with whom, remains to be seen."
Knowing I had nothing more to lose, I said, "With a renegade called
Rakhal Sensar."