Mara asked for a room, preferably on the ground floor, and at the back, and when she added the excuse "because we sleep badly and need quiet," the shrewd little smile on the woman's face said she heard this request often. Then she remarked that runners from Shari and from Karas were expected. They told her that Shari was under siege, but she knew that already. They saw that she was probably as well equipped with informers as any warlord or city official. "They often have interesting news," said she. "I don't always tell them what they want to know. It depends."

Now was the moment for a coin to appear. The trouble was, Mara believed that a whole coin was too much for what they wanted, which was only a warning if the runners knew about them.

"Can you change this?" said Mara.

The woman's eyes narrowed and glinted: she was certainly not one who did not know what a gold coin was. She took the coin from Mara as if she had been given it, and, resting her two hands on the counter, the coin lying between them, she looked full at Mara and then at Dann.

"Interesting news about the young General," she said. "You'd not think that General Shabis's favourite would run off, in the middle of a war." But she smiled, at Dann and then at Mara. "They are saying it was for love."

She took up the coin, deliberately, and put it deep between her breasts. Then she said, "There are ways across the frontier that avoid the roads and the guards."

Mara fetched the other coin from her pocket, and the woman took it from her.

"You rest. I'll call you if you have to run for it."

In the room she gave them, at the back, with a low window, there were two beds and they looked comfortable, but it seemed too dangerous to sleep. They lay down with their belongings close to them.

Mara thought how sweet it had been, the sharing of the time before sleep, with Meryx, the lazy chat about this and that, the intimacy, and how sweet this would be now with Dann, if their ears were not straining.

"If Shabis caught up with you — would he punish you?"

"He would have to. Death sentence. Discipline."

"Yet he loves you."

"It's not me he loves." He sounded tired and irritated. "Mara, didn't you ever think it was a bit odd, your being in his house?"

"That wasn't his home. It was where he worked."

"And did you ever wonder why the Hennes abducted you?"

"Of course. But it was all because they thought I was pregnant by Shabis. Another breeding programme."

"And how would they know you were pregnant? Shabis's wife sent a message to Izrak that you were pregnant by Shabis. She wanted to get rid of you." She was silent with the shock of it. "She was jealous. Surely you aren't surprised?"

"I didn't even know he had a wife, at first."

"And when you did?"

"I suppose I thought that if. I thought it must be all right."

"You are a funny woman. You didn't even notice he was in love with you?"

"No. All I cared about was — he was teaching me. That's all. I've never been so happy in all my life, Dann."

He laughed. She did not like the laugh. The male soldiers at the watchtower laughed like that, talking about women.

"And if I'm so strange, what about you? That boy of yours in the headquarters in Shari. You left him just like that, you didn't care."

"Mara, I told him every day, sometimes several times a day, that I was going to leave. One day I'd just walk off and leave and he had to be prepared for that."

"All the same, he was jealous; if looks could kill, then..."

"He came to H.Q. and begged me to take him as an army servant. He had run away from the Hennes. He wanted to work for me. And so he did." Again, she did not like his laugh. "He was in rags and he was starving when he came. He was fed. He was given a uniform. He'll find another officer to take him on. He's probably done that already."

"And you don't care."

"I care more about Kira, as it happens." She saw him lift his head up off the pillow, to see how she reacted. She was astonished. "Kira and I were together. I wanted her to come with me when I was posted to the Northern Army, but she likes her comforts, Kira does. She preferred her nice little house and her nice little life. And her nice poppy." He mimicked Kira's, "But I only smoke a little bit, Dann, just a teeny little bit sometimes, Dann. She's probably got someone else already too."

"And you had that boy and Kira going at the same time."

"You know what, Mara? Because you were living with Meryx all that time, all cosy and nice, you talk like an old woman."

"All that time," said Mara, fierce. "It was less than a year."

"A long time, for people like us." He yawned. "We do get about Mara, don't we?"

From the big communal room came a commotion. Voices raised sharply. Commands.

"We'd better leave," said Dann.

At this the door opened and in came the proprietor. "Time to go," she said. "They're after you, all right. Go out through the window. There's a girl there. She'll show you the way." And then, turning back to say it, "Good luck. You'll be safe when you're across." She went out.

"People like us," said Dann.

"Or very much don't like us."

"But they always like the gold. Quick." He was out of the window, and gone; and she followed him. A young girl was crouching in the bushes, her eyes glinting in the light that fell from the window. She went fast out of the garden, looking back to see if they followed. The moon was a tiny yellow slice, and the stars were brighter; the stars glittered and crowded and the starlight was strong enough to make faint shadows. In a moment the three were running through trees and a pursuer would find it hard to see them at all: birds or ghosts flying through the forest.

It was past midnight when the girl gasped, "Here it is," meaning the frontier; but there was nothing to be seen, only a line of hills where they jumped and scrambled through rocks. Then the forest continued: great, old trees with a soft litter beneath that absorbed the sounds of their running feet. Mara and Dann expected her to go back, but she ran on with them until they stopped on the crest of a rise, and pointed forward. The sky was lightening. The town they were looking down on spread widely, and as far as they could see north. The lights of the town were low and little, netting the darkness in a dim twinkling. Here the girl said, "I'm going back," and was already off when both Dann and Mara caught hold of her. They needed to know certain things. First, what language was spoken here? Charad, she said, surprised that there could be even the possibility of another language, for the foreign talk she heard at the inn was as strange to her as the night cries of the birds they had been hearing. What money did they use? Money, she said. Mara fetched out from the bottom of her sack a little handful of old coins, and the girl shook her head when she saw them, putting out her hand to touch them, disbelieving. Did things go well here? Was Bilma prosperous? Was it suffering drought? What were the people who ruled this country like? But the two saw that she was a girl whose longings had been satisfied when she got employment at that grand dynamic centre, the Inn at the Edge, the last in Charad on the road north, where travellers passed through with tales of lands she had scarcely heard of. And one day a handsome young man would come to the inn and. All this they knew about the skinny little girl whose meagre flesh was not because she had lacked food, but because she was still a child. Mara offered her some of old Han's coins, but she giggled, and said that she was only doing as she had been ordered. And off she ran, disappearing into the trees.