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_