e to recoup, winning back his thousand tals and a higher place in
Ammad's society.

The silver-haired nobleman rose from his chair and reached for the
candle to blow out its flame. A few hour's sleep would make him better
able to face the morrow....

... From her place on the narrow balcony of the nobleman's apartment,
Dylara watched the candle flame perish under the man's exhalation. This
time, she thought, I will not wait so long for him to fall asleep. She
watched him cross the room and disappear from sight into the sleeping
quarters beyond, waited for the space of a hundred heartbeats to be sure
he would not come into this room again, then very slowly, her heart in
her mouth, she began to move with extreme stealth across the floor
toward the corridor door.

The journey seemed to take hours although two minutes were all that
passed before she reached out to remove the heavy bar Vokal had dropped
into place when his last guest was gone. With trembling fingers she set
the thick length of wood against the stone flooring and slowly swung the
door open a crack.

Light gleamed dully from down the corridor. With great care she widened
the distance between the door's edge and its frame. When the space was
large enough, she put her head out cautiously and looked along the
corridor.

Standing there, watching her with wide eyes, was one of the palace
guards!

Shock held both Dylara and the guard momentarily paralyzed--then Dylara,
the first to recover, was into the corridor and running swiftly in the
opposite direction.

Behind her she heard the guard shout a command. But before he could do
more, she was around a bend in the corridor and racing toward the stairs
she knew were further along....

... Vokal, not yet completely asleep, leaped from his bed at the sound
of a sudden hoarse cry from outside his apartment. When he arrived at
the open door--a door he had only moments before barred from inside--he
found a knot of palace guards already assembled there.

"What has happened?" he demanded sharply.

The man regularly stationed outside his door explained in a few words.

Vokal's cheeks paled at the full implication of what had occurred came
to him. Whoever this mystery woman was, she had overheard--_must_ have
overheard--his conversations with both Rhoa and Sitab. Were she a
spy--someone who would go to Jaltor with what she had heard--Vokal was a
dead man!

"Find her!" he screamed. "A hundred tals to the man who