"This is no matter to me," another voice said. The Braith who sat on the floor. Staring. Unmoving. "What of the bitch?"

The others shifted their attention uneasily. "She can not be at issue, Myrik," said Lorimaar high-Braith. "She is of Ironjade."

The man's lips drew back sharply; for an instant his placid face was wildly distorted, a beast's face, a rictus of emotion. Then it passed. His features settled into pale stillness again, everything held in check. '"I will kill this woman," he said. "Teraan was my teyn. She has set his ghost adrift upon a soulless world."

"Her?" Lorimaar's voice was incredulous. "Is this truth?"

"I saw," replied the man on the floor, the one called Myrik. "I fired after her when she rode us down and left Teraan dying. This is truth, Lorimaar high-Braith."

Dirk tried to rise to his feet, but the gangling Kavalar pushed him down again, hard, and slammed his head back against the metal flank of the aircar to underline the point.

The frail oldster spoke then-the clawed ancient who carried the child's head. "Take her then as your personal prey," he said, his voice as thin and sharp as the blade of the flaying knife that hung at his belt. "The wisdom of the holdfasts is old and certain, my brothers. She is no true woman now, if she ever was, neither heldwife or eyn-keth. Who is there to vouch for her? She has left her highbond's protection to run with a mockman! If she was flesh of man's flesh once, it is so no longer. You know the ways of the mockmen, the liars, the weres, the great deceivers. Alone with her in the dark, this mockman Dirk would surely have slain her and set in her place a demon like himself, fashioned in her image."

Chell nodded agreement and said something grave in Old Kavalar. The other Braiths looked less certain. Lorimaar traded scowls with his teyn, the square fat man. Bretan's hideous face was noncommittal, half a mask of scar tissue, half blank innocence. Pyr frowned and continued to tap restlessly with his baton.

It was Roseph who replied. "I ruled Gwen Delvano human when I was arbiter at the square of death," he said carefully.

"This is truth," Pyr said.

"Perhaps she was human then," the old man said. "Yet she has tasted blood and slept with a mockman, and who will call her human now?"

The hounds began to howl.

The four that Myrik had chained to the aircar started the cacophony, and it was taken up by the pack locked inside Lorimaar's domed vehicle. Chell's massive canine snarled and pulled at his chain, until the elderly Braith jerked back angrily; then the creature sat and joined the howling.

Most of the hunters glanced toward the silent darkness beyond their little circle (Myrik, frozen-faced and immobile, was the notable exception-his eyes never left Gwen Delvano), and more than one touched his sidearm.

On the edge of the circle, beyond the aircars and their pool of light, the two Ironjades stood side by side in shadow.

Dirk's pain-his head was pounding-abruptly seemed of no consequence. His body trembled and shook. He looked at Gwen; she was looking up, at them. At Jaan especially.

He walked into the light then, and Dirk saw that he was staring at Gwen almost as fixedly as the man called Myrik. He seemed to move very slowly, like a figure in some dusty dream, a man asleep. Garse Janacek was alive and liquid at his side.

Vikary was dressed in a mottled suit of chameleon cloth, all shades of black and blacker when he entered the circle of his enemies. By the time the hounds had quieted, he was wearing dusty gray. The sleeves of his shirt ended just above the elbow; iron-and-glowstone embraced his right forearm, jade-and-silver his left. For an endless instant he loomed very large. Chell and Lorimaar both stood a head taller, but somehow, briefly, Vikary seemed to dominate. He flowed past them, a striding ghost-how unreal he was even there-who walked through the Braiths as if he could not see them, and stopped near Gwen and Dirk.

But it was all illusion. The noise subsided, the Braiths began to speak, and Jaan Vikary was just a man again, larger than many but smaller than some. "You trespass, Ironjades," Lorimaar said in a hard angry tone. "You were not called to this place. You have no right to be here."

"Mockmen," spat Chell. "False Kavalars." Bretan Braith Lantry made his singular noise. "Your betheyn I grant to you, Jaantony high-Ironjade," Pyr said firmly, but his baton moved in nervous haste. "Discipline her as you will, as you must. The mockman is mine to hunt."

Garse Janacek had stopped a few meters away. His eyes moved from one speaker to another, and twice he seemed about to reply. But Jaan Vikary ignored all of them. "Remove the bindings from their mouths," he said, gesturing toward the prisoners.

Pyr's long-limbed teyn stood over Dirk and Gwen, facing the Ironjade highbond. He hesitated a long moment, then bent and undid the gags.

"Thanks," Dirk said.

Gwen shook her head to throw loose hair out of her eyes and climbed unsteadily to her feet, her arms still bound behind her back. "Jaan," she said in an uncertain voice. "You heard?"

"I heard," Vikary said. Then, to the Braiths, "Cut loose her arms."

"You presume, Ironjade," Lorimaar said.

Pyr, however, seemed curious. He leaned on his baton. "Cut loose her arms," he said.

His teyn pulled Gwen around roughly and used his knife to free her.

"Show me your arms," Vikary said to Gwen.

She hesitated, then brought her hands out from behind her back and extended them, palms down. On her left arm the jade-and-silver shone. She had not removed it.

Dirk watched, bound and helpless, feeling chill. She had not removed it.

Vikary looked down on Myrik, who still sat with his legs crossed and his small eyes set on Gwen. "Rise to your feet."

The man rose and turned to face the Ironjade, taking his gaze from Gwen for the first time since he had arrived. Vikary started to speak.

"No," Gwen said.

She had been rubbing her wrists. Now she stopped and laid her right hand on her bracelet. Her voice was steady. "Don't you understand, Jaan? No. If you challenge him, if you kill him, then I will take it off. I will."

For the first time, emotion washed over Jaan's face, and the name of it was anguish. "You are my betheyn," he said. "If I do not… Gwen…"

"No," she said.

One of the Braiths laughed. At the sound, Garse Janacek grimaced, and Dirk saw a savage spasm come and go on the face of the man called Myrik.

If Gwen noticed, she paid no mind. She faced Myrik. "I killed your teyn," she said. "Me. Not Jaan.

Not poor Dirk. I killed him, and I admit it. He was hunting us, as you were. And killing the Emereli as well."

Myrik said nothing. Everyone was still.

"If you must duel, then, if you really want me dead, duel me!" Gwen continued. "I did it. Fight me if your revenge is so important."

Pyr laughed loudly. An instant later his teyn joined him, and Roseph as well, then several of the others -the fat man, Roseph's blocky stern-faced companion, the clawed ancient. All of them were laughing.

Myrik's face went blood-dark, then white, then dark again. "Betheyn-bitch," he said. The shuddering rictus passed across his face once more, and this time everyone saw. "You jape me. A duel is… my teyn… and you a woman!"

He ended with a scream that startled the men and set the hounds again to howling. Then he shattered.

His hands rose over his head and clenched and unclenched, and he struck her across the face as she shied away from his fury, and suddenly he was on her. His fingers wrapped around her throat and he dove forward and she went over backwards, and then they were rolling over and over on the floor until they came up hard against the side of an aircar. Myrik came out firmly on top, with Gwen pinned beneath him and his hands digging deep into the flesh of her neck. She hit him then, hard across the jaw, but in his rage he scarcely seemed to feel it. He began to slam her head against the aircar, again and again and again, screaming all the while in Old Kavalar.