without altering the expression on his face or the easy tone of
his voice, began to make elaborate comments on my entrance, my
appearance, my ancestry and probably personal habits, all defined in the
colorfully obscene dialect of Shainsa.

That had happened before. The Wolfan sense of humor is only half-human.
The finest joke is to criticize and insult a stranger, preferably an
Earthman, to his very face, in an unknown language, perfectly deadpan.
In my civilian clothes I was obviously fair game.

A look or gesture of resentment would have lost face and dignity--what
the Dry-towners call their _kihar_--permanently. I leaned over and
remarked in their own dialect that I would, at some future and
unspecified time, appreciate the opportunity to return their
compliments.

By rights they should have laughed, made some barbed remark about my
command of language and crossed their hands in symbol of a jest decently
reversed on themselves. Then we would have bought each other a drink,
and that would be that.

But it didn't happen that way. Not this time. The tallest of the three
whirled, upsetting his drink in the process. I heard its thin shatter
through the squeal of the alabaster-haired girl, as a chair crashed
over. They faced me three abreast, and one of them fumbled in the clasp
of his shirtcloak.

I edged backward, my own hand racing up for a skean I hadn't carried in
six years, and fronted them squarely, hoping I could face down the
prospect of a roughhouse. They wouldn't kill me, this close to the HQ,
but at least I was in for an unpleasant mauling. I couldn't handle three
men; and if nerves were this taut in the Kharsa, I might get knifed.
Quite by accident, of course.

The _chaks_ moaned and gibbered. The Dry-towners glared at me and I
tensed for the moment when their steady stare would explode into
violence.

Then I became aware that they were gazing, not at me, but at something
or someone behind me. The skeans snicked back into the clasps of their
cloaks.

Then they broke rank, turned and ran. They _ran_, blundering into
stools, leaving havoc of upset benches and broken crockery in their
wake. One man barged into the counter, swore and ran on, limping. I let
my breath go. Something had put the fear of God into those brutes, and
it wasn't my own ugly mug. I turned and saw the girl.

She was slight, with waving hair like spun black glass, circled with
faint tracery of stars. A black glass belt bound her n