The next moment was not for her, because Meryx looked hard at Ida and said, "Mahondis don't use these things."

Ida's smile became nervous and guilty; she shifted about, and her fan began fluttering and trembling. Everyone was looking at her.

"And you set a bad example," said Meryx; and now they were looking at Kira, who faced them with more self-command than Ida.

Kira said, "I only have a little puff sometimes." And she laughed her petulant, defiant laugh.

"Then don't," said Candace.

Ida was in tears. She went out, her fan loose in her hand, like a broken wing. Kira sat on, refusing to be guilty.

Next day Mara was in the courtyard with the young women, and she asked questions about the growing of poppy, and the supply of ganja, but realised they did not really think about it. Only Larissa understood, and Mara saw the answer to something that had been puzzling her: why were so few people there on the evenings when matters of importance were discussed? Larissa was there because she had come to certain conclusions by herself, and was promoted to the inner circle of the Kin. And that meant that those of the inner circle were always on the lookout for people who did ask questions, who understood, and could answer intelligently when asked, "And what did you see?"

Mara knew that she was about to be tested, and so it turned out. Juba, then Meryx, and Meryx again, took her to the fields where the poppies were growing, and then to the ganja, took her to the barns where the workers, male and female, were getting milky juice from the poppies, drying it, making big sticky balls, ready to smoke, or drying the ganja and crushing it and putting it into sacks. She was given poppy to smoke. She knew this was to make sure she could refuse it, having tried it. And indeed, while her head floated with imaginings, she thought she could not live without it; but when she was herself again, she was frightened by its seductive power, and swore never to touch it again. And she was offered it again, by the workers, and then by Ida, and finally by Meryx himself, who was openly apologetic. Then she smoked the ganja, but did not find that so enticing. She was invited again, by Juba, by Candace, with whom she actually did share a little smile that said she knew she was being tested.

Then she was told, "There's no need for you to work with the ganja and poppy again."

During this time most evenings she spent with Orphne, or with Larissa, avoiding Ida who was always begging her to sit with her. But there were other evenings when she was invited into the room for important occasions, and questioned. One evening was spent on what Mara had learned about fertility from Daima. Everyone was present. The atmosphere was tense. They were anxious. This was the heart of the Mahondi concern for the future: that they were not reproducing. How had Daima told Mara about the cycle? — "No, Mara, her exact words, please."

Mara said, using Daima's words, "Now listen, Mara. Once there was a girl, rather like you, and she loved a young man — and one day you will too. He begged her to lie with him, and she found it hard to refuse; and then one night she gave in, but it was the wrong time in her cycle, and she was at her most fertile. She was pregnant. He blamed her. He said it was the woman's duty to know her blood cycle, and the safe days; and when the case came to court, the judge agreed, and said it was the young woman's first duty to herself and to her society to know her cycle."

Juba said, "That court must have been in Rustam. Do you know anything about how it worked? What the laws were?"

Dromas said, "Juba, she was seven years old when she left."

"But Daima might have told you, Mara — did she?"

But Mara sat silent. She was most bitterly regretting the opportunities she had not taken. How had she seen Daima all those years? She had taken her for granted: a kind old woman — but she was not really so old — who had taken in two orphans, literally out of the dark, and loved them and looked after them. She had lived like them on roots and bits of dried weed and flour cakes; she had never complained about being thirsty and dirty and very hungry. And yet she had been an important person in the court of Mara's parents' predecessors, where she had lived cleanly and sweetly and gently. And she had known so much that Mara had never asked her. How much Mara would have given now to have Daima back for a week, a day, even an hour, to ask her questions. Now Daima was dead, all that knowledge, all that information, was gone, for ever.

Mara said, "Once when I asked her how she knew about the old cities up on the hills, she said the Mahondis had all kinds of bits of information from the past. She did not know where it all came from." "Not these Mahondis," said Candace, grim. "Why don't you have it too?"

"You forget, we have been slaves for a long time. But your family were never slaves."

And now Mara, who was forcing herself to ask this, said, "Do you know what happened to my parents?"

"They were killed the night you escaped." "How do you know?" "Gorda was here. He told us." "What happened to him? Is he alive?"

"He made a rising against the Hadrons. A foolish uprising. He was killed with his followers."

"That means he did it without asking you; you didn't know about it — no, that's not possible, you must have known about it, but you didn't approve."

Meryx said, "You might have noticed that we do things more — quietly."

Mara was thinking of that night, the first time she had been in a rock house, and how he had been kind. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "We would have been killed without him."

"Yes," said Candace.

And now, when Mara was least expecting it, Candace asked her, "And what is your name?"

It seemed to her that her real name was about to appear on her tongue and she would say it here, among these friends, the Kin — her Kin — but at the last moment she remembered Lord Gorda's, "Your name is Mara. Remember that always. Mara."

"My name is Mara," she said. They all nodded and smiled, at each other and at her. "But what is my real name? Do you know it?"

"It would be better for you not to know it," said Candace. "Who knows what the Hadrons know? — what they got out of Gorda, before he died."

"Perhaps one day I'll know my real name again," she said.

"I hope you will," said Candace. "I for one think that we Mahondis have a good chance of ruling here one day. I know that not everyone agrees with me."

At this, the next reply Mara had planned to give when asked, "And what did you see?" — became impossible. She was thinking, I have seen the future, and they haven't. And they wouldn't believe me.

Instead she said, "I saw a beetle up there on the ridge. Do they ever come down into Chelops?"

"Yes, and we kill them," said Meryx. "But some people believe they are breeding in the tunnels — Gorda saw them: he was using the tunnels as a base for his uprising."

"How did he get water?" asked Mara.

"To the point, as always," said Meryx. "The water was cut off to the Towers long ago. But the people sympathetic to Gorda living near the Towers helped him with water."

Mara said, not knowing she was going to say it, surprising herself, "Is anyone living there now? — the Towers? Could Dann be there?"

"We don't think so," said Candace.

That meant Dann had been discussed when she was not there, and they knew things she did not.

"If he is there," said Juba, "then he can't last long." "Do you ever send slaves to find out?"

"Listen, Mara," said Juba, leaning forward urgently, holding her eyes with his, making her listen, "we don't draw attention to ourselves. You seem to forget that we are slaves. There are penalties — death penalties — for being in the Towers. We Mahondis succeed because we are quiet, we make life easy for the Hadrons, and they don't need to think about us."