"I urge you to consider the possibilities, Chell," Bretan said. "This one, this Dirk t'Larien, he can be man or mockman, korariel of Ironjade or not. Truth?"

"Truth. But he is no true man. Listen to me, my teyn. You are young, but I know of these things from kethi long dead."

"Consider nonetheless. If he is mockman and the Ironjades name him korariel, then he is korariel whether he admits it or no. But if that is truth, Chell, then you and I must go against the Ironjades in duel. He was trying to steal from us, remember. If he is Ironjade property, then that is an Ironjade theft."

The big white-haired man nodded slowly, reluctantly.

"If he is mockman but not korariel then we have no problem," Bretan continued, "since then he may be hunted. And what if he is a true man, human as a highbond, and no mockman at all?"

Chell was much slower than his teyn. The older Kavalar frowned thoughtfully and said, "Well, he is no female, so he cannot be owned. But if he is human, he must have a man's rights and a man's name."

"Truth," Bretan agreed. "But he cannot be korariel, so his crime would be his alone. I would duel him, not Jaantony high-Ironjade." The Braith gave his strange grunt-growl again.

Chell was nodding, and Dirk was almost numb. The younger of the two hunters seemed to have worked things out with a nasty precision. Dirk had told both Vikary and Janacek in no uncertain terms that he rejected the tainted shield of their protection. At the time, it had been an easy enough thing to do. On sane worlds like Avalon it would unquestionably have been the right thing as well. On Worlorn, things were not quite so clear.

"Where shall we take him?" Chell said. The two Braiths spoke as if Dirk had no more volition than their aircar.

"We must take him to Jaantony high-Ironjade and his teyn," Bretan said in his sandpaper growl. "I know their tower by sight."

Briefly Dirk considered running. It did not seem feasible. There were two of them, with sidearms and even an aircar. He would not get far.

"I'll come," he said when they started toward him. "I can show you the way." It seemed that he would be given some time to think, in any event; the Braiths did not seem to know that Vikary and Janacek were already out at the City of the Starless Pool, no doubt trying to protect the hapless jelly children from the other hunters. "Show us, then," Chell said. And Dirk, not knowing what else to do, led them toward the undertubes. On the way up he reflected bitterly that all this had come about because he was tired of waiting. And now, it seemed, he would wait after all.

At first, the waiting was sheer hell.

They took him to the airlot on top of the empty tower after they discovered that the Ironjades were not to be found, and they forced him to sit in a corner of the windswept roof. The panic was rising in him by then, and his stomach was a painful knot. "Bretan," he began, in a voice laced by hysteria, but the Kavalar only turned on him and delivered a stinging open-handed blow across the mouth.

"I am not 'Bretan' to you," he said. "Call me Bretan Braith if you must address me, mockman."

After that, Dirk was silent. The broken Wheel of Fire limped oh-so-slowly across the sky of Worlorn, and as he watched it crawl, it seemed to Dirk that he was very close to a breaking point. Everything that had happened to him seemed unreal, and the Braiths and the events of the afternoon were the least real of all, and he wondered what would happen if he were to suddenly leap to his feet and vault over the edge of the roof into the street. He would fall and fall, he thought, as one does in a dream, but when he smashed on the dark glowstone blocks below there would be no pain, only the shock of a sudden awakening. And he would find himself in his bed on Braque, drenched with sweat and laughing at the absurdities of his nightmare.

He played with that thought and others like it for a time that seemed like hours, but when he looked up at last, Fat Satan had hardly sunk at all. He began to tremble then; the cold, he told himself, the cold Worlorn wind, but he knew that it was not the cold, and the more he fought to control it the more he shook, until the Kavalars looked at him strangely. And still the waiting went on.

And finally the shakes ran their course, as had the thoughts of suicide and the panic before them, and an odd sort of calm swept over him. He found himself thinking again, but thinking of nonsensical things: speculating idly-as if he were soon going to place a wager-on whether the gray manta or the military flyer would return first, on how Jaan or Garse would fare in a duel with one-eyed Bretan, on what had happened to the jelly children in the distant Blackwiner city. Such matters seemed terribly important, though Dirk didn't know why.

Then he began to watch his captors. That was the most interesting game of all, and it served to pass the time as well as any other. As he watched, he noticed things.

The two Kavalars had hardly spoken since they escorted him up to the rooftop. Chell, the tall one, sat on the low wall that surrounded the airlot only a meter away from Dirk, and when Dirk began to study him, he saw that he was quite an old man indeed. The resemblance to Lorimaar high-Braith was very deceptive. Although Chell walked and dressed like a younger man, he was at least twenty years senior to Lorimaar, Dirk guessed. Seated, his years weighed on

him heavily. A distinct paunch bulged over the soft-shining metal of his mesh-steel belt, and his wrinkles were carved very deep into his worn brown face, and Dirk saw blue veins and splotches of grayish-pink skin on the back of Chell's hands as they rested on his knees. The long useless wait for the Ironjades' return had touched him too, and it was more than boredom. His cheeks seemed to sag, and his wide shoulders had unconsciously fallen into a tired slouch.

He moved once, sighing, and his hands came off his knees and twined together, and he stretched. That was when Dirk saw his armlets. The right arm was iron-and-glowstone, twin to the one displayed so proudly by one-eyed Bretan, and the left was silver. But the jade was missing. It had been there once, but the stones had been torn from their settings, and now the silver bracelet was riddled by holes.

While weary old Chell-it seemed suddenly hard for Dirk to see him as the menacing martial figure he had been just a short time ago-sat and waited for something to happen, Bretan (or Bretan Braith, as he demanded he be called) paced the hours away. He was all restless energy, worse than anyone that Dirk had ever known, even Jenny, who had been quite a pacer in her time. He kept his hands deep in the slit pockets of his short white jacket and walked back and forth across the rooftop, back and forth, back and forth. Every third trip or so he would glance up impatiently, as if he were reproaching the twilight sky because it had not yet yielded up Jaan Vikary to him.

They were a strange pair, Dirk decided as he watched them. Bretan Braith was as young as Chell was old-surely no older than Garse Janacek and probably younger than Gwen and Jaan or himself. How had he come to be teyn to a Kavalar so many years his senior? He was no high, either, he had given no betheyn to Braith; his left arm, covered by fine reddish hairs that glinted now and then when he walked very close and let them catch the sunlight, had no bracelet of jade-and-silver.

His face, his strange half-face, was ugly beyond anything that Dirk had ever seen, but as the day waned and false dusk became real, he found himself getting used to it. When Bretan Braith paced in one direction, he looked utterly normal: a whip-lean youth, full of nervous energy held tightly in check, so tightly that Bretan almost seemed to crackle. His face on that side was unlined and serene; short black curls pressed tightly around his ear and a few ringlets dropped to his shoulder, but he had no hint of a beard. Even his eyebrow was only a faint line above a wide green eye. He appeared almost innocent.