"And the foreigners?" he asked. He was already planning the trip in his mind, maybe in mid-Partan, after the rains. But Kitheri came first. It all hinged on Hlavin Kitheri.

"Sometimes they come with us, sometimes they stay in Kashan. They are like children," Chaypas told him. She seemed a little puzzled by this herself. "Too small to travel like adults but only one to carry them. And that one lets them walk!"

If Supaari was curious before, he was baffled now, but Chaypas was showing signs of nervousness, swaying from side to side, as she often did when she spent too much time in ghost houses.

"Sipaj, Chaypas," he said, rising smoothly from his cushions, calculating that enough time had passed for Awijan to have concluded terms with the ribbon suppliers. "Such a long journey you've made! Someone's heart would be glad to send you to Ezao in a chair."

Her tail came up with pleasure and she even trembled a little, her eyes sliding away and closing. This bordered on flirtation and it passed his mind that she was remarkably attractive. He smothered the spark before it caught fire. Third-born, he still had his standards, which were considerably higher than those of his social betters. Urbane and sophisticated in many ways, Supaari VaGayjur was thoroughly bourgeois in others.

He sent a runner for a chair and, stifling yawns, waited with Chaypas in the courtyard until it arrived shortly after second sundown. He could hardly see her as she climbed into the chair but the fragrance of her ribbons was very fine; she had wonderful taste in perfumes, a natural elegance that Supaari admired. "Sipaj, Chaypas," he called quietly, "safe journey to Ezao and thence home." She returned his farewell, laughing breathily as the bearers lifted the chair supports, rocking the seat.

It was a luxury few Runa ever experienced, to be carried through the narrow city streets like a lord. Supaari was genuinely pleased to provide her with an evening she would remember, borne through the crowds of urban Runa, safe to go about their personal business in the blushing light of evening, while the Jana'ata slept. The breeze off the bay would carry her new ribbons like cirrus clouds behind her, their fragrance rising like mist from a cataract. By tomorrow, merchants from all over the city of Gayjur would be looking for ribbon at any price, and Supaari VaGayjur would own every scrap of it.

It was Sofia Mendes's fate to enrich investors who were unknown to her. The heavy black hair, which had inspired Chaypas to invent a new fashion, was at this moment pushed carelessly back, the ribbons Askama had braided into it slipping into disarray. Irritable as Sofia Mendes was, she'd have cut it all off without a thought, had scissors been handy. She'd brewed a cup of coffee out of habit, but it was too hot today to drink it and it cooled at her elbow; soon, such profligacy would be shocking. At the moment, however, beauty, adornment and wealth were further from her mind than usual, which was very far indeed. Her intellect was wholly occupied with the task of finding some sufficiently uncivil response to Emilio Sandoz's suggestion that she was being stupid.

"I can explain it to you again, but I can't understand it for you."

"You are insufferable," she whispered.

"I am not insufferable. I am correct," he whispered back. "If you prefer to memorize each declension separately, please do so. But the pattern is perfectly apparent."

"It's a false generalization. It doesn't make any sense."

"Oh, and I suppose that assigning gender to tables and chairs and hats and declining nouns on that basis does make sense? Language is arbitrary by nature," he informed her. "If you want sense, study calculus."

"Sarcasm is not argument, Sandoz."

Emilio took a deep breath and began again with unconcealed impatience. "All right. Once more. It is not abstract versus concrete. If you try to force that rule on Ruanja, you'll make consistent errors. It is spatial versus unseen or nonvisual." He reached out toward the tablet that lay on the table between them and stabbed a finger down at a section of the display, careful not to jar Askama, who had just fallen asleep in his arms. "Consider this group. Animal, vegetable or mineral: these words all denote something that takes up space in some manner and they are all declined with this pattern. You follow?" He pointed to another section of the screen. "In contrast, these nouns are nonspatial: thought, hope, affection, learning. This group takes the second pattern of declension. Clear so far?"

Concrete and abstract, dammit, she thought stubbornly. "Yes, fine. What I don't understand is—"

"I know what you don't understand! Stop arguing with me and listen!" He ignored her glare. "The overall rule is, anything that can be seen is always classified as occupying space, because seeing things is how you know they are spatial, so you use the first declension. The trick is that anything unseen, including but not limited to things that are inherently nonvisual, takes this second declension." He sat back abruptly and then glanced down at Askama, relieved to see she was still sleeping. "Now. I invite you to disprove. Please. Just try."

She had him. Face bright as ivory in the sun, she leaned forward and prepared to deliver the coup de grace. "Not ten minutes ago, Askama said, Chaypas-ru zhari i washan, and she used what you call the non-visual declension. But Chaypas is very large. Chaypas most certainly takes up a good deal of space—"

"Yes. Brava! Perfect. Now, think!"

He was being patronizing. She stared at him, open-mouthed, ready to detonate, when it suddenly came clear. Letting her head fall abruptly into her hands, she muttered, "But Chaypas is gone. So you can't see him. So you don't use the spatial declension. You use the nonvisual, even though Chaypas is concrete and not abstract." She looked up. He was grinning. "I hate it when you're smug."

The dark, merry eyes were triumphant. Emilio Sandoz had taken no vow of false modesty. It was a nice piece of analysis and he was immensely pleased with himself, and it had not escaped his own notice that he'd won Sofia's bet with Alan Pace. They'd made contact with the Runa only seven weeks ago, but he already had the basic grammar nailed. Damn, I'm good, he thought to himself, and his grin widened as Sofia stared at him through narrowed eyes, trying to think of some case that wouldn't fit the model.

"All right, all right," she said ungraciously, picking up her tablet, "I concede. Give me a few minutes to get it all down."

They were a good team. Sandoz was a master of this discipline but she was a far better writer, fast and clear. Already three papers bearing the authorship "E. J. Sandoz and S. R. Mendes" had been radioed back for submission to scholarly journals.

Finished with her notes, Sofia looked up and smiled. She had met before, in yeshiva students whom her parents often invited to dinner when she was a girl, this mixture of incisive intelligence and dreaminess, the joyful combative intellectual style and the tendency to fall into an inner world, absorbed and remote. Barelegged and barefoot, Sandoz was tanned to the color of cinnamon, wearing the loose khaki shorts and oversized black T-shirt that had replaced the soutane, impossibly hot in this climate. Sofia herself was equally browned, similarly dark and slender, dressed as simply, and she could understand why Manuzhai had assumed at first that she and Emilio were "littermates." The notion had been funny and embarrassing, as Manuzhai's pantomimed explanation of the word had been, but she could see how a Runao might come to that conclusion.

Askama sighed, stretching out a little. Emilio came to life and looked at Sofia with round-eyed alarm. Askama was dear, but she chattered incessantly; naps like this one were a welcome relief. "I wonder," said Sofia very softly, when it was clear that Askama would not awaken, "if a blind Runao would always use the nonvisual declension."