"I am not, but a man of my own race."

"Many men, however, you have known, mysire? Men such as I am and as Mysire Rechtor is?"

"Yes. I was one of those who boarded your whorl when it neared our sun. In the Whorl, I made the acquaintance of many of your race, and I have known others since, on both the whorls we once called ours."

"Of these, my client Mysire Horn one is?"

"Yes. We became better acquainted when he was living in my house, some distance from here. I have found him to be an honorable man, devoted to your kind."

"If to our kind devoted he is, to yours a foe he must be, mysire. That do you deny?"

"I do. You spoke of your breed. You breed your own foes, who are our foes as well, those who would destroy others for gain and rob them for power." Here Windcloud paused-I shall never forget it, and I doubt that anyone who was present will-and turned his shadowed face, very slowly, toward Hamer.

"Your guest Mysire Horn was. This you have said. Invite him you did?"

"No. Another `man' who was living in my house brought him. He was not afraid of me, as the others were."

"This you did, though living in your house without your permission he was?"

"Soon it will be spring. The white fishcatchers will return, booming, and darkening your sky which was ours in their mating flight. Two will nest upon your chimney, though you will not invite them."

Windcloud's shadowed gaze had been upon Hamer, although he had addressed Taal; at this point he directed it to Nat. "You say he has harmed you, yet I see you whole, fat, and free, while another stands beside him with a sword."

To his everlasting credit, Nat rose and tried to withdraw his accusation; but Hamer would not permit it, asking whether the statements he had made were false and warning him that he would be prosecuted for lying under oath if he acknowledged that they were.

It was only then that I truly understood what had gone wrong in Dorp. It was not that its judges took bribes or that they used their power to enrich themselves, although they certainly did. It was that they had created a system that slowly but surely destroyed all who came in contact with it. Left to work it would destroy me, as Nat had desired; but it would destroy Nat as well, and Dorp itself.

Vadsig came to talk to me. "Here you sit, Mysire Horn, writing and writing. To us you do not speak."

"Poor man!" Oreb confirmed; and I protested that I talked to him, if only to tell him to be quiet, and that I had talked to Captain Wijzer.

"You we miss. Hide and Hoof it is. Me, also, mysire. Angry with us you are?"

"Not at all. But, Vadsig, I'd much rather have you young people desirous of my company than longing for my absence."

"Me to go you want?" She jumped up, shaking her full skirt and pretending to be deeply offended. "Tell me you must! Say back to the kitchen you go, dirty Vadsig!"

I protested that no man could possibly object to the company of such a woman as she.

She sat again. "When your town we reach, married Mysire Hide and I will be. His mother's blessing he wishes. To her a good son he is.,,

"I know, Vadsig, and he's a good son to me as well. I couldn't be happier for you both."

"The blessing she gives, mysire? This you think?"

"Good girl?" Oreb inquired. Knowing that he meant you, dear Nettle, I nodded.

"Not she gives, I think." Vadsig eyed me sidelong to gauge my reaction.

"You're mistaken," I said, and my thoughts were full of you.

"No cards I have, mysire."

I dropped five or six into her lap, not real cards such as we used in Viron, but the shining gold and silver imitations that we see more and more here on Blue.

She would not touch them. "To Hide already so much you give, mysire."

"But I have given nothing to you, Vadsig, and I owe you a great deal."

"Mora and Fava you owe."

"I do indeed, and I'll try to repay them if I ever get the opportunity. At this moment I have the opportunity to repay you, to a small degree; and I intend to grab it. I won't detail all you did for us-you know it best. But I know it well enough, and those cards are merely a token."

"Also your son you give?" Her upper lip trembled, its minute motion piteously revealed by the brilliant sunlight.

"Are you asking whether I'll bless your union? Of course I will. I do. I'll perform the ceremony myself if you wish it, though it would be better to have His Cognizance Patera Remora. I can assist him, if he will permit it."

"A poor wife I will make." She smoothed her gown, pressing it against her body to show that she was slender to the point of emaciation.

"Before I returned here I met a young woman named Olivine, Vadsig. If she were here with us-and in a sense she is, for I have a part of her-she would point out to you that you can give a man your love and bear children. She could do neither, and she would gladly trade every one of the centuries the gods may allow her for your next year."

Vadsig's eyes melted. "Could not you help her, mysire?"

"No. She helped me."

Oreb picked up the first word, joining it to his favorite predicate. "No cut!"

I nodded. "I tried not to harm her, Oreb. It was the best that I could manage."

"Her hair?" Vadsig plunged thin fingers into her short orange tresses. "Ugly as mine it was?"

"She had none. As for yours, it is clean and straight and strongall admirable things."

"A bad color it is, mysire."

"A good woman's hair is never of a bad color," I told her.

We talked more, she expressing her fears of you and your rejection, and I assuring her that all were groundless, as indeed I feel certain they are. Let her fear childbirth, poor child, and murderous rape in lawless New Viron; she has more than enough to worry about without fantasies.

Then, "Sometime back like you I go, mysire?"

"Back to Viron, you mean, Vadsig?"

"To Viron, yes, mysire. Also to Grotestad. To go to the Long Sun Whorl I would like. Always of it you talk, and cook, and my old master and mistress. In Grotestad they were born, mysire, but never it I have seen."

I told her it was possible she would.

"There the Vanished People went?"

I nodded.

"To greet us it was?"

"You might put it so, though they were sensible enough to find out a good deal about us-and infect us with inhumi-"

"Bad thing!"

"Before they ventured to greet even a few of us."

"Bad it was," Vadsig agreed with Oreb.

"To leave inhumi among us?" I shook my head. "It was a small price to pay for two whorls, and it enabled the Neighbors to gauge much more accurately the differences between our race and their own."

"Because our blood they drink, mysire?"

For a moment I considered how I might explain without violating my promise. "You can't see yourself, Vadsig."

"In the mirror I see."

I shook my head. "Has anyone told you that you have wonderful eyes?"

She flushed, shrugging. "Hide it says."

"But you do not believe him, because you know he loves you. You are still very young. When you are older, perhaps you will come to understand that of all the emotions-and indifference, too, because even indifference is an emotion of a sort-only love sees the unveiled truth."

"See good!"

"Yes, love sees well, and it is well to see. No matter how wonder ful your eyes are, however, Vadsig, they cannot look back upon themselves. You see yourself, when you see yourself at all, in silvered glass. I used to know a very clever person who inspected his appearance in the side of a silver teapot every morning."

She smiled, as I had hoped she would. "A spoon in his pocket he might have carried, mysire."

"He knew, of course, that his image was distorted. You compare your own to that of other women you see in reality; but if you were wiser, you might compare their reflections to yours. That is what the Neighbors did. Knowing what their own inhumi were like, they gave us ours so they might compare the two. I wish I knew what they concluded, though I know what they did."