"Well, Councillor Daulis, this is not exactly the kind of place one expects to find you." To Leta she said, "Pile up some of those," and Leta made a high seat with the bed pallets. On this Dalide carefully disposed herself, and then looked at each of them in turn. And they waited, apprehensively, for each had reason to fear her.

This powerful woman looked like some doll or puppet, with a voluminous red cotton garment, for the dust, over her tight leather travelling outfit, and her sharp, black button eyes, her dyed orange-coloured hair.

"Councillor, you owe me for Mara — and I hear that I could have got twice as much for her."

"Not legally," said Daulis, and took out a bag of coins and laid it beside him.

She made a gesture — wait until later. And turned to Leta there on her cushion, "Well, Leta? Have I really treated you badly?"

"No, Mother. But you know that I've always wanted to leave. And I have my quittance money."

Now Dalide turned to Mara. "I suppose you think that what you are going to find up in that Centre they talk about is going to be some kind of happy-ever-after? Well, I shouldn't count on it."

And now a long, very cold inspection of Dann, designed to shame him. He did manage to return her gaze, but they could all see he was not far off tears.

"Leta," Dalide said, "the woman who runs my house here wants to retire. Would you like to take her place?"

Leta did not seem able to take this in. She shifted about on her cushion, took her hand to her face in the beginnings of that gesture: It is all too much for me, dropped her hand, then she was sitting with both hands over her mouth, staring at Dalide. "You mean, stay here in Kanaz and run your Kanaz house?"

"That's what I said. You can do it. You are a clever woman. You know how I operate."

Daulis and Mara watched the struggle going on in Leta, and understood it. She had said she was ambitious, and the truth was that they could easily imagine her as the Mother Dalide of Kanaz.

"What makes you think I could deal with these praying people? I have no experience of them."

"They are just men. Like the Councillors. I have today paid them off for the coming year. And if there's trouble, I'm only a week away in Bilma. Or two days by coach."

"That means that yet again I'll not be able to walk about the streets without looking into the face of every man I meet to wonder if some time I've been his mattress."

"There's no need to sleep with them if you are running the place."

Leta was very still. Her eyes were fixed — staring inwards. And then she said, "Mother, I can't, I'm sorry. I think I'll go North with Mara and Daulis."

"And Dann," said Dalide. "Perhaps he'll gamble you away next."

Mara said, "Dalide, I gather you don't exactly discourage men from gambling away their women. And if you don't like Dann, then what about that little snake Bergos?"

"I don't have to like them for it," said Dalide. "Nor like Bergos. I'm a business woman. I see opportunities and I take them. And I'm not the only one who has agents in the Transit Eating House, to see what women are there to be bought or what men have got the gambling fever badly enough. Some of the Councillors, for instance — yes, Councillor

Daulis?" "I don't," he said.

"Some of your friends do." And now she said to Leta, "Give me your quittance price." "Mother," said Leta, "it is all I have."

This time it was in Dalide that a struggle took place. Her eyes were on the bag that held the quittance price, and then her face softened and she said, "Very well, keep it."

And now Leta flung herself forward, embraced Dalide's knees, pressed her face into the scarlet folds, and sobbed.

The great knot of pale hair, which glistened in the lamplight, stood out over her neck, and Dalide took out the pins, and the hair flooded down, like sunlight. Dalide sat stroking the hair, fingering it, lifting strands, letting the light play on it. The face of the ugly, little black woman was a marvel of regret, sorrow, and bitter humour. "Ever since you came to my house as a little girl, I've longed to have hair like this." And she patted her own orange spikes in a way that was rueful, comic and self-critical. "Leta, if you don't do well up North, then come back to me. I'm fond of you — though I daresay you've sometimes wondered." She pushed Leta away, and said to Daulis, "Give me Mara's price now."

"May I give it to you in Bilma?"

"No. I need it to pay for two new girls I'm taking back with me." Daulis gave her the bag with the money.

"At least with you I don't have to count it." She got to her feet. "And have you any messages for little Crethis?" Daulis shook his head. "And you, Leta?"

"Tell her... tell her."

"I know what to say. And are you coming back to Bilma, Councillor?" "I suppose I am. When I've done what I have to do." "When you've delivered these two Mahondis." "Who are these girls, Mother?" asked Leta.

"Local girls. One of these precious priests asked me if I wanted them. He bought them from their parents, just as I bought you, Leta. They'll be a nice change for the men, in my Bilma house. What do you say, Councillor?"

Daulis shook his head: Leave me alone. "How old are they?" asked Mara.

"They don't know how old they are. I would say ten or eleven. But they're underfed, so they look younger. I'll have them fed and prettied up in no time. Goodbye, Mara. You can't say you've done badly in my house. You've found a protector. Goodbye, Leta. Perhaps I'll see you again. I'll say goodbye to you, just in case, Councillor." She ignored Dann. And went out.

Leta ran to the window and they all crowded around her. Down in the street waited a carriage, with two mules. It was protected by a light awning, but they could see huddled together two little girls, who shrank away from Dalide when she got in and sat opposite them. Two frightened little faces: and they could hear the children's miserable sobbing.

Leta left the window, sank to a floor cushion, sat with her face in her hands, and swayed, back and forth, containing grief.

Daulis laid his hand on her shoulder and said, "That's all over for you, Leta." Then, "I'm going to sleep."

He threw a pallet into a corner, lay on it with his back to the room. Soon Leta did the same. Mara and Dann lay face to face on a single pallet and whispered to each other what had happened to them both in the last few days.

In the morning they sat around their breakfast trays, and made plans. How much money did each of them have? — was the main question.

Leta offered her quittance price, and Daulis said, "No, you keep it. We'd only use that as a last resort."

Dann said he had some change, but he was keeping it for an emergency.

"This situation not being emergency enough?" asked Daulis, and Dann laid out what he had, enough of the little coins for perhaps a day's lodging and a day's food.

What Daulis contributed was not much more: he had been counting on paying Dalide in Bilma.

Mara slipped her two hands up through her loose sleeves, untied her cord of coins and laid it down. "Eleven," she said.

"Treasures concealing treasures," said Daulis, and Leta looked sharply at him, while Dann said jealously, "I hear you are Mara's husband?"

"You may have noticed that I've not been insisting on my marital rights."

Dann apologised. Then he said, "I'm going to have to get out my coins."

"Oh no," said Mara, and untied a coin to give to him.

He went white. Really, she might have hit him. "I can't take your money after... after."

"Don't be silly," said Mara.

Leta said, quickly, tactfully, so that Mara realised she had been too casual, insensitive, "Let me have a look, Dann. Mara's told us."

Dann said, "I think one of them is just under the skin." He lifted his robe up. The scar showed white and glistening, and there were lumps under it. "Look," he said to Leta. "Feel that."