She struggled, which motion only felt the better in his hands, and she gave outmuffled cries, which were far from loud, his mouth covering hers the while. Heheld her tight and sought with his eyes for some more convenient alcove amongthe broken amphorae and barrels, a place where they might not be disturbed.

All at once another sound penetrated the fog of sense and sound, the scuff ofanother foot near him. Sjekso started to spin himself and his victim about, wentthe least bit over to that foot and had a hand clamped on to his own chin, hishead jerked back, and a deadly keen blade at his throat in the same instant.

'Let the lady go,' a male whisper suggested, and he carefully, trading in allhis remaining advantage, relaxed his hands and let them fall, wondering wildlyall the while whether his only chance might be in some wild try at escape. Thewoman in the edge of his vision stepped back, brushed at her robes, adjusted herhood. The knife rode razor-edged at his throat and the hand which held his chingave him nothing.

Mradhon Vis kept his grip and held the ruffian just off his balance, looked in amoment's distraction at the lady in question ... at a severe and dusky face inthe faint light of the alleyway. She was beautiful. His romantical soul wastouched - that seldom-afforded self which launched itself mostly in the wake ofmore profitable motives. 'Be off,' he told Sjekso, and flung the villain agood several body lengths down the alley; and Sjekso scrambled up and setto his heels without stopping to see anything.

'Wait!' the woman called after Sjekso. The would-be rapist spun about with hisback to a wall, ducking an imagined blow from behind. Mradhon Vis, dagger stillin hand, stood facing him, utterly confounded.

'The boy and I are old friends,' she said - and to Sjekso: 'Isn't it so?'

Sjekso straightened with his back against the wall and managed a bow, if awobbling one ... managed a sneer, his braggadocio recovered in the face of a manhe, after all, knew from the dice table that night - and Mradhon Vis took atighter and furious grip on his dagger, knowing this vermin at least from thetables at the Unicorn.

But feminine fingers touched very lightly on his bare arm. 'A misunderstanding,'the woman said, very soft and low. 'But thank you for stepping in, all the same.You have some skill, don't you? Out of the army, maybe - I ask you, sir ... Ihave need to find someone ... with that skill. To guard me. I have to come andgo hereabouts. I could pay, if you could find me someone like yourself, a friendmaybe - who might serve...'

'At your service,' Sjekso said, with a second grander flourish. 'I know my wayaround.'

But the woman never turned to see. Her eyes were all for Mradhon, dark andglittering in the night. 'He's one, in fact, I might sometimes wantprotection/row. - Do you know someone who might be interested?'

Mradhon straightened his back and took a superior stance. 'I've served asbodyguard now and again. And as it happens, I'm at liberty.'

'Ah,' she said, a hand to her robed breast, which outlined female curves in theshadow. And she turned at once to the confused villain, who had taken advantageof the moment to slip towards the shadows and the corner. 'No, no, wait. I didpromise you this evening. I had no right to put you off; and I want to talk withyou. Be patient.' - A glance then back, her hand bringing a purse frombeneath her robes. She loosed the strings and took out a gold coin that caughtMradhon's whole attention, the more so when she dropped the heavy purse into hishand. Only the one coin she held, it winking colourless bright in the moonlight,and she held that up like an icon for Sjekso's eyes - another look at Mradhon:'I lodge seventh down from this corner, the first steps you'll come to that havea newel on the rail: on your right as you go. Go there. Learn the place so youcan find it tomorrow morning, and be waiting there for me at midmorning. I'll bethere. And the purse is yours.'

He considered the weight in his palm, heavy as with gold. 'I'll find it,' hesaid, and, less than confident of the situation at hand: 'Are you sure you don'twant me to stay about?'

Black brows drew together, a frown uncommonly grim. 'I have no doubts to mysafety. - Ah, your name, sir. When I pay, I like to know that.'

'Vis. Mradhon Vis.'

'From-'

'Northward. A lot of places.'

'We'll talk. Tomorrow morning. Go on, now. Believe me, that the quarrel wasn'twhat it seemed.'

'Lady,' he murmured - he had known polite company once. He clenched the purse inhis fist and turned off in the direction she had named - not without a backwardlook. Sjekso still waited where he had fixed himself against the wall; but thelady seemed to know he would look back, and turned a shadowy look on him.

Mradhon moved on quickly and further along the winding way, stopped andanxiously shook out the purse into his hand, a spill of five heavy pieces ingold and half a dozen of silver. Hot and cold went through him, like the shockof a blow, a tremor through things that were ... A second glance back, butbuildings had come between him and the woman and her bought-boy Sjekso. Well, hehad hired to stranger folk and no few worse to look on. He gave a twitch of hisshoulders at that proceedings back there and shrugged it off. There was gold inhis possession, a flood of gold. His gallantry had come from his own poverty,from one look at the woman's fine clothing and a sure knowledge that SjeksoKinzan was all hollow when pushed. And for that gold in his hand he would havewaited in the alley all night, or beaten Sjekso to fine rags, no questionsasked.

It occurred to him while he went that it might involve more than that, but hewent, all the same.

The woman looked back at Sjekso and smiled, a fervid smile which made wider andwider chaos of Sjekso's grasp of the situation. He stood away from his wall and- sobered as he had been in the encounter, deprived of the vaporous warmth ofthe wine in his blood - still he recovered something of anticipation, reestimated his own considerable animal charm in the light of the lady's sultrydark eyes, in the moonlike gleam of the gold coin she held up before him. Hegrinned, his confidence restored, stood. easier still as she came to him - itmight have been the wine after all, this new blush of heat; it might have beenher slim fingers which touched at his collar and drew a line with the edge ofthe coin down among the fine hairs of his chest, disturbing there the chain ofthe luckpiece he wore.

His luck had improved, he reckoned, laying it all to his way with women. She hadliked it after all... they all did; and she might be parted from more than agolden coin, and if she thought of using him and that bastard northerner oneagainst the other, good: there was a chance of paying off Mradhon Vis. He hadskills the northerner did not; and he knew how to get the most out of them.He took most of his living from women, in one way or the other.

'What's your name?' she asked him.

'Sjekso Kinzan.'

'Sjekso. I have a place ... not the lodgings where I sent that fellow; that'sbusiness. But my real house... near the river. A little wine, a soft bed ...I'll bet you're good.'

He laughed. 'I make it a rule never to go out of my own territory till I knowthe terms. Here's good enough. Right over here. And I'll bet you don't care.'

'Mine's Ischade,' she murmured distractedly, as he put his hands up under therobes. She swayed against him, her own hands on him, and he found the coin andtook it from her unresisting fingers. She brushed his lips with her own andurged him on. 'My name's Ischade.'