r people who do the
fine decorative work they do, they're the most incompetent practical
mechanics I've ever seen or heard of. You're going to travel from
village to village?"

"Yes. The cover-story is that we're lovers who have left our village
in order not to make Vall's former wife unhappy by our presence,"
Dalla said.

"Oh, good! That's entirely in the Dwarma romantic tradition," Bronnath
Zara approved. "Ordinarily, you know, they don't like to travel. They
have a saying: 'Happy are the trees, they abide in their own place;
sad are the winds, forever they wander.' But that'll be a fine
explanation."

Thalvan Dras, the big man with the black beard and the long red coat
and cloth-of-gold sash who lounged in the host's seat, laughed.

"I can just see Vall mending pots, and Dalla playing that mandolin and
singing," he said. "At least, you'll be getting away from police work.
I don't suppose they have anything like police on the Dwarma Sector?"

"Oh, no; they don't even have any such concept," Bronnath Zara said.
"When somebody does something wrong, his neighbors all come and talk
to him about it till he gets ashamed, then they all forgive him and
have a feast. They're lovely people, so kind and gentle. But you'll
get awfully tired of them in about a month. They have absolutely no
respect for anybody's privacy. In fact, it seems slightly indecent to
them for anybody to want privacy."

One of Thalvan Dras' human servants came into the room, coughed
apologetically, and said:

"A visiphone-call for His Valor, the Mavrad of Nerros."

Vall went on nibbling ham and wine sauce; the servant repeated the
announcement a trifle more loudly.

[Illustration:]

"Vall, you're being paged!" Thalvan Dras told him, with a touch of
impatience.

Verkan Vall looked blank for an instant, then grinned. It had been so
long since he had even bothered to think about that antiquated title
of nobility--

"Vall's probably forgotten that he has a title," a girl across the
table, wearing an almost transparent gown and nothing else, laughed.

"That's something the Mavrad of Mnirna and Thalvabar never forgets,"
Jandar Jard drawled, with what, in a woman, would have been
cattishness.

Thalvan Dras gave him a hastily repressed look of venomous anger, then
said something, more to Verkan Vall than to Jandar Jard, about titles
of nobility being the marks of social position and responsibility
which their bearers should never forget. That j