A ritual born of the long nights and incompatible company when hot words, unforgiven, could lead to life-long enmity. One she completed with equal stiffness.

"As my guests you are welcome now and in the future. Friendship prevails. This, of your kindness, I beg."

Then, as they sipped the ceremonial toast she whispered, "Earl! I'm sick of these fools! Take me to bed!"

* * *

It was a wide and ornate couch set in a chamber touched with brightness; inset panes reflecting the light of golden lanterns in shimmers of ruby and yellow, violet and blue, amber, purple, cerise, magenta. Broken rainbows spilled from clusters of glass, the pendants scored with fine, diffracting lines. A doll dressed as a bride sat on a stool and watched with emerald eyes. In vases of striated marble flowers scented the air, thick, fleshy petals bearing swirls of gold on scarlet, their stamens a somber black. A container held glimmering liquid in which bubbles rose in a constant stream to burst in thin, brittle tinklings. A clock, counted the hours.

"Idiots!" Lavinia kicked at a cushion and sent it flying to strike a table and send glasses flying. As they shattered she sent a vase to splinter against a wall. "The fools! Are they mad? Have they no memory? Earl, for my people, I apologize. As for the Council-"

Dumarest caught her arm as she was about to add to the destruction.

"That's enough."

"Release me!"

"Stop acting like a spoiled child!" His eves met hers, held them, watched as the fury died. "That's better. Why destroy things which have done you no harm?"

"Why allow men to live who have insulted you so deeply?"

"Should I have killed them for speaking their minds?"

"You gave in too easily," she snapped. "Any man worthy of the name will fight to hold his own. You should have defied them. What could they do if you had?"

Dryly he said, "Do? They could kill me, Lavinia. From the shadows, from behind, with poison or disease or sabotage. With an assassin or someone eager to earn a reward. No man can withstand a group determined on his death."

The answer of a coward? From another she might have thought so but she knew that Dumarest had no lack of courage. Even while they had talked he must have been assessing the situation, gauging probabilities and deciding on a course of action. But what?

"Defying them would have gained nothing," he said when she asked the question. "But you heard what Roland said-first the estate must be valued and then the money to pay me must be found. All of it will take time."

Time! The answer, of course, one she had been too blind to see. Time in which to prepare, to arrange support, to plan. Time in which he would be safe from the drives of impatient men.

"You tricked them," she said. "You guided them and the fools couldn't see it. Earl, my darling, I didn't understand. Forgive me."

The clock hummed, gave a soft series of chimes, a peal of bells as if wafted from a temple on some distant shore. Colors flowed over the dial in a swathe of kaleidoscopic illumination which revealed bizarre figures moving in silhouette across the surface in a stately saraband.

Another hour gone-how many more until the dawn?

Dumarest crossed to the table disturbed by the flying cushion and, from the wreckage, selected an unbroken glass. His mouth felt dry and his head ached with a dull throbbing which ran from nape to temples. A bathroom opened from the chamber and he filled the glass with water, sipped, swallowed, then thrust his head beneath the faucet.

"Earl?" Lavinia watched him, her eyes anxious as he straightened, water dripping from his hair. He dried it with the towel she handed him and dug his fingers into the bunched muscles at the base of his skull. It didn't help. "That headache again? I've some drugs which could help."

Simple compounds which did nothing but raise the pain-level but they would help. He swallowed a triple dose, took water to wash down the tablets, drank more to ease his thirst.

As he set down the empty glass he said, "You and Roland are close. Has he mentioned anything about Gydapen's heir before?"

"No."

"Would he have done so had he known?"

"Yes-I am certain of it. We are friends, Earl. He has known me all my life and is of the Family. Had anything threatened me he would have spoken."

"This doesn't threaten you."

"It threatens you, Earl, and Roland knows what you mean to me. For him it would be the same." Pausing she added, thoughtfully. "There's something wrong, isn't there? Something which doesn't quite add up. You think there's more to this than just a son eager to regain his father's estate?"

"If he is the son."

"You think he isn't?"

"I'm not sure. Things could be as they seem or a cover for something else. Gydapen had a plan to conquer this world. With armed men at his command he would have had little opposition. Mercenaries could have been hired to back his own retainers and, with the advantage of surprise, he would have won. But did he think of the plan all by himself? Was he working wholly alone. We know that he must have had at least one friend here on Zakym."

"The one who warned him we were coming to attack?"

"He was waiting for you," Dumarest reminded. "How else would he have known."

A warning which had almost cost them their lives and would have done had it not been for Dumarest's quick thinking and fantastic speed. He had said nothing more of it at the time-had he intended to leave? If so then what would be the problems of a backward world to him?

"A member of the Council," she said, bleakly. "Or someone close enough to one to know what was going on. It could have been a friendly warning, Earl. We had time to fully explain. Whoever it was needn't have believed us."

"Perhaps," he admitted. "But there's something else. Gydapen had traveled off-world. Maybe he met someone, arranged something. Those guns we took had to be paid for. Mercenaries, if hired, don't work for nothing. There's little money on this world. Gydapen must have stripped himself to set up the operation and have promised rich rewards. Treasures, perhaps."

"Treasure?" Her laugh was brittle. "On Zakym?"

"The promise would have been enough. A handful of gems shown with the lie they had been won from the Sungari. A hint that there could be a mountain more waiting to be gained. I've known men to fight like demons for less."

And with relatively few estates manned by retainers softened by routine and a protected life, with few weapons and all strangers to violence as practiced by men accustomed to war the end was predictable. Some killings. Some attacks and destruction. A few carefully calculated atrocities and, like an overripe fruit, the planet would have fallen.

"Tremendous returns for a small investment," said Lavinia, bitterly. "A culture developed over centuries destroyed for the sake of money. Gydapen must have been insane. But, Earl, if he did have a partner then-"

"He would still be interested," said Dumarest. "The more so now that he doesn't have to share. But first he must obtain Gydapen's estate in order to have a base. The retainers will form a cadre of reliable men, a bodyguard he can trust. The new owner will provide a source of information and a means to exert pressure on the Council. He can't be the partner-he is too young for that. He must be a willing tool agreeable to being manipulated. But once established-"

"It will be the end of Zakym as we know it. The estates gone. The land ravaged. Slavery, maybe, everything that is vile. No! It mustn't be!"

Dumarest said, "Of course I could be wrong. It is only a guess."

"No," she said flatly. "You aren't wrong. It makes too much sense and it explains too much. But how to get the Council to believe it? They will think you are fighting to retain the estate. Earl-what can we do?"