"Good," said Perig.

"The play," said Leweli.

"Wasted on louts," said Cholkwa. "Get up, old man."

Perig groaned, stood and searched in his baggage until he found a tunic, faded but clean and untorn.

"That will do," said Cholkwa. "You needn't look pretty. There's no one left to charm."

"It's over?" asked Ahl.

"There's still the pirate ship," said Cholkwa. "But the pirates on shore are prisoners or dead. Perig needs sleep. So do I."

Then they were gone. She'd heard about the kind of mania that overcomes some men after battle. That must be what she'd just seen, unless it was the effect of halin and the tsin ears. Cholkwa, who had always seemed a bit sullen, had shone with happiness, so beautiful -- in spite of his rumpled fur -- that even a woman could see his beauty. Perig had seemed tired, nothing more. Maybe it was too soon for him to feel happiness. Maybe he'd done too much.

That night she dozed rather than slept. Often she was awake, or in a strange state between sleep and waking. At dawn she went on deck. The Taig sailors were up, watching the pirate ship.

"Leaving, I think," said the Taig captain.

Sails billowed out, filling with wind. The anchor went up, water dripping from it and flashing in the first rays of the rising sun.

"They've decided to abandon their kin," said one of the Taig sailors.

"What do you expect of pirates?" said another sailor. The ship headed north and west, vanishing at last among the waves. When it was gone, the Taig captain said, "We need to spend another day here. I want the two of you -- the women -- to stay on board."

"Why?" asked Ahl.

"What we have to do on shore is not pleasant."

Cremate their dead, Ahl thought, and kill the remaining pirates. Cremation did not bother her, though it took a primitive form in her era; but the cremation of Taig men belonged to Taig men. The other activity was male as well.

"We'll stay on board," said Ahl.

Perig and Cholkwa went with the Trig men. Ahl and Leweli went to the cabin. The day had a mild wind, enough to carry the pirate ship away, but not enough to bring fresh air through the porthole. The room seemed stifling to Ahl. The baby fretted. "She misses her potion," Leweli said. "But I'm not giving her any more, unless she becomes impossible."

The baby became impossible and got more potion. "Just a little, to make her quiet."

Ahl went through her baggage and repacked everything, made sure her knives were sharp, then went on deck.

"Something has occurred to me," she said to a sailor. "If you build a fire for cremation, it may attract more pirates."

"We thought of that," the sailor said. "We won't cremate our men until we're ready to leave. What the captain is doing now is questioning the pirates. When he's done, they'll be killed and buried. No reason to burn them. We don't intend to take their ashes home."

"I haven't heard anything," Ahl said.

"Our men went inland with the pirates. The captain didn't want to bother you.

Sound carries well over water, especially on a day like this."

There were dark shapes on the beach, laid in a line. The Taig dead, almost certainly. One man stood by them, leaning on a spear. No one else was visible. A bright hot day. The air barely moved. Bugs would be gathering around the Taig bodies. Not a pleasant job the watcher had.

Would it be pleasanter to be inland, torturing the captive pirates?

Ahl shook her head, thinking life was full of difficult choices.

IN LATE AFTERNOON the sailors came back, Perig and Cholkwa with them. Ahl waited on the deck. Cholkwa looked sullen again, while Perig looked grim.

"That's done," the older man said. "The Taig know how to reach the pirates'

homes, though the pirates certainly did not want to give out the information."

"Goddess," said Cholkwa.

"They said they weren't going to harm you," Perig told Ahl. "They let you go, they said, though my impression at the time was they hadn't noticed your disappearance. Jehan and Jehan certainly seemed busy with other things. I don't remember anyone coming to tell them that you were gone, though I was occupied at

the time."

"You shouldn't talk about such things to women," said Cholkwa.

"You did last night."

"I was drunk."

The sailors set to work on their repairs. Most looked grim, though a few seemed satisfied. The next day the ship was ready to go. They took it out of the harbor, anchoring where the pirate ship had been, then rowed back to burn their kinsmen.

This was done at night. Looking through the porthole, Ahl saw the great red glare of the funeral fire. The air smelled of wood smoke and burning flesh. By morning the fire was out. No smoke rose into the cloudless sky. The Taig let out their sails, going west and south over an ocean dotted with foam.

Once the island was gone from sight, the Taig captain called them all on deck.

"I want to know the truth about you people. I've heard one story about you which is obviously untrue; and our cook says there's another story, which you told the pirates. Is there a third story? A fourth? A fifth?"

Perig glanced at Ahl. "Tell him what you know," she said.

Perig did, describing how he and Cholkwa and been stranded in the country of the Sorg. "Like a luat trapped in a too-shallow lagoon." Just when they reached desperation, the witch appeared and made her offer: money to go south, if they would escort two women in disguise. "It was wrong to do it, of course," Perig

said. "But we had no alternative."

The Taig captain glanced at Ahl. "Why did you need to flee your home, escorted by unrelated men? Surely this is shameful behavior."

Ahl told her story: how the Sorg matrons had decided to kill five children in order to get out of a business contract. One child was left alive, the baby in the cabin. She and Leweli had decided to save it, advised by the witch who hired Perig and Cholkwa. "She said it was the right thing to do."

"You've put us in a bad place," the captain said. "It's too late in the season to turn back and risk more storms. In addition, if I returned you to Sorg, the Helwar would be angry; and no one makes better ships than they. But if I take you to Helwar, as I intend to do, I'll make bad enemies among your kin. Why couldn't you let the child die? The crime --if it is a crime --would not be yours, but would belong to your mother and the other matriarchs. It's wrong to take on too much responsibility."

"That may be," said Ahl. "But it's done."

The cook, who had been listening said, "It's my belief that those of us who were taken prisoner would have died, except for the actors' cleverness. Now that I know they are not perverts and committers of incest, I can be grateful. Granted, it's odd for men to travel with unrelated women, but every man is supposed to help women in need of help; and healthy babies should not be killed, especially to escape from a business contract. Where will we be, if people don't keep the agreements they make? I don't intend to tie my mind into knots by trying to make sense of this situation. Go with the simple solution, kinsman! Thank these folk for their help, and deliver them to Helwar."