“Who? What?”

“Over here. Nialli Apuilana sent me. With a token of love from her for you.”

“I know you. You are Cura—”

“Right. Here, let me give it to you.”

“She is at the games today. I thought I would go to her.”

“Go to your Queen instead,” Curabayn Bangkea said, and wrapped a silken strangling-cloth around Kundalimon’s neck. The emissary struggled, kicking and using his elbows, but struggle was useless against Curabayn Bangkea’s great strength. He drew the cloth tight. He imagined this man’s hands on Nialli Apuilana’s breasts, this man’s lips covering her mouth, and his grip tightened. For a moment Kundalimon made harsh rough hjjk-noises, or perhaps they were merely death-rattles. His eyes bulged. His lips turned black, and his legs gave way. Curabayn Bangkea eased him to the ground and dragged him deeper into the alleyway. There he left him lying, propped up against the wall like a drunk. He wasn’t breathing. Wrapping the strangling-cloth around his own wrist as though it were an ornament, Curabayn Bangkea returned to his wagon, which he had left three streets away. In half an hour more he was back at the stadium. He was surprised at how calm he felt. But it had all gone so smoothly: a very skillful job, no question of it, quick and clean. And good riddance. The city was cleaner now.

Husathirn Mueri was in one of the grand Presidium boxes near the center aisle. Curabayn Bangkea looked across to him, and nodded. It seemed to him that Husathirn Mueri smiled, but he wasn’t sure of that.

He took his seat in the commoners’ section, and waited to be invited to Husathirn Mueri’s box.

The summons was a long time in coming. They had run the long race, and done the vaulting one, and were getting ready for the relays. But eventually a man Curabayn Bangkea recognized as a servant of Husathirn Mueri appeared. “Guard-captain?” he said.

“What is it?”

“Prince Husathirn Mueri sends me to you with his good wishes. He hopes you’ve been enjoying the games.”

“Very much.”

“The prince invites you to share a bowl of wine with him.”

“It would he an honor,” Curabayn Bangkea said.

After a time he realized that the man didn’t seem to be leading him toward the central row of boxes where the aristos sat. Rather, he was taking him on some route around the far side, to the arched corridor that encircled the stadium.

Perhaps Husathirn Mueri had changed his mind, Curabayn Bangkea decided, about meeting with him in such a conspicuous place as his own box. Maybe he was afraid that the job had been botched, that there had been witnesses, that it wasn’t such a good idea to be seen in public with him until he knew what had actually happened. Curabayn Bangkea felt his anger returning. Did they think he was such a bungler?

There was Husathirn Mueri now, coming along the corridor toward him. Stranger and stranger. Where were they supposed to share that bowl of wine? In one of the public wine-halls downstairs?

He’s ashamed to be seen with me, Curabayn Bangkea thought, furious. That’s all it is. A highborn like him doesn’t ask a mere guardsman into his box. But then he shouldn’t have told me he was going to. He shouldn’t have told me.

Husathirn Mueri looked happy enough to see him, though. He was grinning broadly, as he might if he were going to a rendezvous with Nialli Apuilana.

“Curabayn Bangkea!” he called, from twenty paces away. “There you are! I’m so pleased we were able to find you in this madhouse!”

“Nakhaba favor you, your grace. Have you been enjoying the games?”

“The best ever, aren’t they?” Husathirn Mueri was alongside him now. The servant who had led Curabayn Bangkea to him vanished like a grain of sand in a windstorm. Husathirn Mueri caught him by the arm in that intensely confidential way of his and said, under his breath, “Well?”

“Done. No one saw.”

“Splendid. Splendid!”

“It couldn’t have gone off better,” said Curabayn Bangkea. “If you don’t mind, your grace, I’d like to talk about the reward now, if I could.”

“I have it here,” Husathirn Mueri said. Curabayn Bangkea felt a sudden warmth at his side, and looked down at the smaller man in astonishment. The blade had entered so swiftly that Curabayn Bangkea had had no chance even to apprehend what was happening. There was blood in his mouth. His guts were ablaze. Pain was starting to spread through his entire body now. Husathirn Mueri smiled and leaned close, and there came a second stunning burst of warmth, and more pain, far more intense than before; and then Curabayn Bangkea was alone, clinging to the railing, sagging slowly to the ground.

To Hresh the games seemed endless. The crowd was roaring with excitement all about him, but he longed to be anywhere else, anywhere at all. Yet he knew there was no hope of leaving the stadium until the last race was run, the last weight was tossed. He would have to sit here, bored, wet, aching with the knowledge of irretrievable loss and struggling desperately to hide the pain that he felt. Nialli Apuilana sat beside him, completely caught up in what was going on down there on the field, cheering and shouting as each race was decided, just as though their conversation of the night before had never taken place. Just as though she was unable to realize that she had struck him in the heart, a blow from which he could never recover.

“Look there, father!” she said, pointing. “They’re bringing out the cafalas!”

Yes, they were going to run the cafala race now, a comic event, each rider atop one of the plump short-legged beasts trying frantically to make his sluggish mount move forward against its will. It had always been one of Nialli Apuilana’s favorites: so silly, so completely absurd. One of his little jokes, in fact. He was simply being playful when he had added a cafala race to the original roster of games. But the others had taken him seriously, had loved the idea, in fact; and now it was one of the high points of the day.

Hresh had never cared much for games himself, not even in his boyhood in the cocoon. Sometimes he had played at kick-wrestling and cavern-soaring with the others, but never with any enthusiasm. He had been too slight, too small, too strange for such things. Spending time with gray-furred old Thaggoran the chronicler had been more to his liking, or, once in a while, wandering by himself in the maze of ancient abandoned corridors beneath the main dwelling-chamber.

But games were important all the same. They provided amusement; they held the attention of the flighty; and, what was far more significant, they focused the spirit on divine matters — the quest for excellence, for perfection. And so he had devised this annual festival in Dawinno’s honor, Dawinno being the god of death and destruction but also of mutability, of transformation, of inventiveness and wit, of a thousand channels of energy. And, having devised the games, he was stuck here whether he liked it or not, watching them to the end.

The rain came and went, now a faint misty drizzle, now a sharp slanting flurry. No one seemed to care. The stadium was covered only at its perimeter: the center sections, even the chieftain’s box, lay open to the sky. Between showers, warm drying winds blew and sometimes the sun appeared, and that was comfort enough for onlookers and contestants alike. In their fascination with the games they paid no attention to the rain. Hresh, sodden and disconsolate, feeling no fascination, suspected he was the only one it bothered.

And now the cafalas were off and away waddling down the muddy track. Usually it was a Beng who won the cafala race. The Bengs, in their wanderings at the edge of hjjk country long before the Union, had found herds of wild cafalas and domesticated them for their meat and their thick wool. They had been the great cafala experts ever since.