"Don't feel too sorry for him, Gwen," Dirk warned. "He would have sent me to my death, and Jaan too, without a moment's hesitation. Garse Janacek is dead, and several of the Braiths, and innocent Emereli in Challenge-and you can lay it all on friend Arkin. Can't you?"

"Now you're the one that sounds like Garse," she said. "What did you tell me? That I had jade eyes? Look at your own, Dirk! But I suppose you're right."

"What do we do with him now?"

"Free him," she said. "For the present. Jaan must never suspect the truth of what he did. It would destroy him, Dirk. So Arkin Ruark has to be our friend again. You see?"

"Yes," he said. The roar of the fire had diminished to a gentle crackling, Dirk noticed; it was almost quiet. Glancing back in the direction of the aircar, he saw that the inferno was guttering out. A few scattered fires still flickered weakly among the rubble, casting a shifting light over the ruined, smoking city. Most of the slim towers had fallen, and those that remained had grown entirely silent. The wind was only a wind.

"Dawn will be here soon," Gwen said. "We should be going."

"Going?"

"Back to Larteyn, if Bretan hasn't destroyed that as well."

"He has a violent way of mourning," Dirk agreed. "But is Larteyn safe?"

"The time for run-and-hide is over," Gwen said to him. "I'm not unconscious now, and I'm not a helpless betheyn who needs to be protected." She raised her right arm; distant fires illuminated the dull iron. "I'm teyn to Jaan Vikary, blooded even, and I've got my weapon. And you-you've changed too, Dirk. You're not korariel anymore, you know. You're a keth.

"We're together, for the moment. We're young and we're strong, and we know who are our enemies are and how to find them. And none of us can ever be Ironjades again-I'm a woman and Jaan's an outbonder and you're a mockman. Garse was the last Ironjade. Garse is dead. The rights and wrongs of High Kavalaan and the Ironjade Gathering died with him, I think, for this world at the least. There are no codes on Worlorn, remember? No Braiths and no Ironjades, only animals trying to kill each other."

"What are you saying?" Dirk said, though he thought he knew.

"I'm saying that I'm tired of being hunted and hounded and threatened," Gwen said. Her shadowed face was black iron; her eyes burned hot and feral. "I'm saying that it's time we became the hunters!"

Dirk regarded her in silence for a long time. She was very beautiful, he thought, beautiful in the way that Garse Janacek had been beautiful. She was a little like the banshee, he decided, and he grieved a private grief for his Jenny, his Guinevere who never was. "You're right," he said heavily.

She stepped closer to him, wrapped him within the circle of her arms before he could react, and hugged him with all of her strength. His own hands came up slowly; he hugged her back, and they stood together for a good ten minutes, crushed against each other, her smooth cool cheek against his stubble. When she finally broke from him, she looked up, expecting him to kiss her, so he did. He closed his eyes; her lips felt dry and hard.

The Firefort was cold at dawn. The wind swirled around it in hammering gusts; the sky above was gray and cloudy.

On the roof of their building they found a corpse.

Jaan Vikary climbed out carefully, his laser rifle in hand, while Gwen and Dirk covered him from the relative safety of the aircar. Ruark sat silently in the back seat, terrified. They had freed him before leaving the vicinity of Kryne Lamiya, and all the way back he had been alternately sullen and ebullient, not knowing what to think.

Vikary inspected the body, which lay sprawled in front of the tubes, then returned to the car. "Roseph high-Braith Kelcek," he said curtly.

"High-Larteyn," Dirk reminded him.

"In truth," he acknowledged, frowning. "High-Larteyn. He has been dead several hours, I would estimate. Approximately half of his chest has been blown away by a projectile weapon. His own sidearm is holstered."

"A projectile weapon?" Dirk said.

Vikary nodded. "Bretan Braith Lantry has been known to use such a weapon in duel. He is a noted duelist, but I believe he has chosen his projectile gun only twice, rare times when he was not content to win by wounding. A dueling laser is a clean precise instrument. Not so this sidearm of Bretan Braith's. Such a weapon is designed to kill, even with a near miss. It is a great sloppy savage thing, and it makes for short deadly duels."

Gwen was staring out to where Roseph lay like a pile of rags. His clothing had the dirty dust color of the roof, and it flapped erratically in the wind. "This was no duel," she said.. "No," Vikary agreed.

"But why?" Dirk asked. "Roseph was no threat to Bretan Braith, was he? Besides, the code duello-

Bretan is still a Braith, isn't he? So isn't he still bound?"

"Bretan is indeed yet a Braith, and that is your 'why' for you, Dirk t'Larien," Vikary said. "This is no duel. This is highwar, Braith against Larteyn. There are very few rules in highwar; any adult male of the enemy holdfast is fair prey, until a peace comes."

"A crusade," Gwen said, chuckling. "That doesn't sound much like Bretan, Jaan."

"It sounds a great deal like old Chell, however," Vikary replied. "I suspect that his teyn swore him to this course as he lay dying. If this is truth, Bretan kills under a pledge, not simply in grief. He will have very little mercy."

In the back seat, Arkin Ruark leaned forward eagerly. "But this is all to the best!" he exclaimed. "Yes, listen to me, this is fine. Gwen, Dirk, Jaan my friend, listen. Bretan will kill them all for us, will he not? Kill them one and all, yes. He is enemy of our enemies, best hope we have, utter truth."

"Your Kimdissi proverb is misleading in this case," Vikary said. "The highwar between Bretan Braith and the Larteyns makes him no friend of ours, except by chance. Blood and high grievance are not forgotten so easily, Arkin."

"Yes," Gwen added. "It wasn't Lorimaar that he suspected of hiding in Kryne Lamiya, you know. He burned that city in an effort to get us."

"A guess, a mere guess," Ruark muttered. "Perhaps he had other reasons, his own, who can know? Perhaps he was mad, crazed with grief, yes."

"Tell you what, Arkin," Dirk said. "We'll drop you off in the open, and if Bretan comes along, you can ask him."

The Kimdissi flinched and looked at him strangely. "No," he said. "No, safer to stay with you, my friends, you will protect me."

"We will protect you," Jaan Vikary said. "You have done as much for us." Dirk and Gwen exchanged glances.

Vikary threw their aircar into sudden motion. They rose and flitted away from the roof over the dawn-dim streets of Larteyn.

"Where…?" Dirk asked.

"Roseph is dead," Vikary said. "Yet he was not the only hunter. We shall take a census, friends, we shall take a census."

The building that.Roseph high-Braith Kelcek had shared with his teyn was located not too far from the Ironjade residence and very close to the undertubes. It was a large square structure with a domed metallic roof and a portico supported by black iron columns. They landed nearby and approached it stealthily.

Two Braith hounds had been chained to the pillars in front of the house. Both of them were dead. Vikary looked them over. "Their throats were burned out with a hunting laser fired from some distance," he reported. "A safe, silent kill."

He remained outside, laser rifle in hand, wary, standing guard. Ruark stayed close at his side. Gwen and Dirk were sent in to search the building.

They found numerous empty chambers, and a small trophy room with four heads in it; three of them were old and dried, the skin tight and leathery, the features almost bestial. The fourth, Gwen said, was a Blackwiner jelly child, fresh-taken, from its look. Dirk touched the leather coverings on some of the furniture suspiciously, but Gwen shook her head no.