He hadn't changed much in six years. His face _was_ worse than mine; he
hadn't had the plastic surgeons of Terran Intelligence doing their best
for him. His mouth, I thought fleetingly, must hurt like hell when he
drew it up into the kind of grin he was grinning now. His eyebrows,
thick and fierce with gray in them, went up as he saw Miellyn; but he
backed away to let us enter, and shut the door behind us.
The room was bare and didn't look as if it had been lived in much. The
floor was stone, rough-laid, a single fur rug laid before a brazier. A
little girl was sitting on the rug, drinking from a big double-handled
mug, but she scrambled to her feet as we came in, and backed against the
wall, looking at us with wide eyes.
She had pale-red hair like Juli's, cut straight in a fringe across her
forehead, and she was dressed in a smock of dyed red fur that almost
matched her hair. A little smear of milk like a white moustache clung to
her upper lip where she had forgotten to wipe her mouth. She was about
five years old, with deep-set dark eyes like Juli's, that watched me
gravely without surprise or fear; she evidently knew who I was.
"Rindy," Rakhal said quietly, not taking his eyes from me. "Go into the
other room."
Rindy didn't move, still staring at me. Then she moved toward Miellyn,
looking up intently not at the woman, but at the pattern of embroideries
across her dress. It was very quiet, until Rakhal added, in a gentle and
curiously moderate voice, "Do you still carry a skean, Race?"
I shook my head. "There's an ancient proverb on Terra, about blood being
thicker than water, Rakhal. That's Juli's daughter. I'm not going to
kill her father right before her eyes." My rage spilled over then, and I
bellowed, "To hell with your damned Dry-town feuds and your filthy Toad
God and all the rest of it!"