She felt Benna's pulse. He was dead or so close to it that it didn't matter any more. She rose and slowly pulled her dagger from the scabbard. Then she stepped out, crouching, sure that the thudding of her heart could be heard in this still room.

So unexpectedly and suddenly that a soft cry was forced from her, a whistle sounded outside. Feet pounded in the room - there was someone here! - and the dim rectangle of the doorway showed a bulk plunging through it. But it was going out, not in. The Raggah had heard the whistle of the garrison soldiers - half the city must have heard it - and he was leaving with his fellows.

She turned and bent down and searched under Benna's tunic and in his loincloth. She found nothing except slowly cooling lumpy flesh. Within ten seconds, she was out on the street. Down a block was the advancing light of torches, their holders not yet visible. In the din of shouts and whistles, she fled hoping that she wouldn't run into any laggard Raggah or another body of soldiers.

Later, she found out that she'd been saved because the soldiers were looking for a prisoner who'd escaped from the dungeon. His name was Badniss, but that's another tale.

4

Masha's two-room apartment was on the third floor of a large adobe building which, with two others, occupied an entire block. She entered it on the side of the Street of the Dry Well, but first she had to wake up old Shmurt, the caretaker, by beating on the thick oaken door. Grumbling at the late hour, he unshot the bolt and let her in. She gave him a padpool, a tiny copper coin, for his trouble and to shut him up. He handed her her oil lamp, she lit it, and she went up the three flights of stone steps.

She had to wake up her mother to get in. Wallu, blinking and yawning in the light of an oil lamp in the corner, shot the bolt. Masha entered and at once extinguished her lamp. Oil cost money, and there had been many nights when she had had to do without it.

Wallu, a tall skinny sagging-breasted woman of fifty, with gaunt deeply-lined features, kissed her daughter on the cheek. Her breath was sour with sleep and goat's cheese. But Masha appreciated the peck; her life had few expressions of love in it. And yet she was full of it; she was a bottle close to bursting with pressure.

The light on the rickety table in the corner showed a blank-walled room without rugs. In a far corner the two infants slept on a pile of tattered but clean blankets. Beside them was a small chamberpot of baked clay painted with the black and scarlet rings-within-rings of the Darmek guild. .

In another corner was her false-teeth making equipment, wax, moulds, tiny chisels, saws, and expensive wire, hardwood, iron, a block of ivory. She had only recently repaid the money she'd borrowed to purchase these. In the opposite corner was another pile of cloth, Wallu's bed, and beside it another thundermug with the same design. An ancient and wobbly spinning-wheel was near it; Wallu made some money with it, though not much. Her hands were gnarled with arthritis, one eye had a cataract, and the other was beginning to lose its sight for some unknown reason.

Along the adobe wall was a brass charcoal brazier and above it a wooden vent. A bin held charcoal. A big cabinet beside it held grain and some dried meat and plates and knives. Near it was a baked clay vase for water. Next to it was a pile of cloths. Wallu pointed at the curtain in the doorway to the other room. 'He came home early. I suppose he couldn't cadge drinks enough from his friends. But he's drunk enough to suit a dozen sailors.' Grimacing, Masha strode to the curtain and pulled it aside. ''Shewaw!' (A combination of'Whew!', 'Ugh!', and 'Yech!') The stink was that which greeted her nostrils when she opened the door to the Vulgar Unicorn Tavern. A blend of wine and beer, stale and fresh, sweat, stale and fresh, vomit, urine, frying blood-sausages, krrf, and kleetel.

Eevroen lay on his back, his mouth open, his arms spread out as if he were being crucified. Once, he had been a tall muscular youth, very broad-shouldered, slim waisted, and long-legged. Now he was fat, fat, fat, double-chinned, huge paunched with rings of sagging fat around his waist. The once bright eyes were red and dark-bagged, and the once-sweet breath was a hellpit of stenches. He'd fallen asleep without changing into nightclothes; his tunic was ripped, dirty, and stained with various things, including puke. He wore cast-off sandals, or perhaps he'd stolen them.

Masha was long past weeping over him. She kicked him in the ribs, causing him to grunt and to open one eye. But it closed and he was quickly snoring like a pig again. That, at least, was a blessing. How many nights had she spent in screaming at him while he bellowed at her or in fighting him off when he staggered home and insisted she lie with him? She didn't want to count them.

Masha would have got rid of him long ago if she had been able to. But the law of the empire was that only the man could divorce unless the woman could prove her spouse was too diseased to have children or was impotent.

She whirled and walked towards the wash-basin. As she passed her mother, a hand stopped her.

Wallu, peering at her with one half-good eye, said, 'Child! Something has happened to you! What was it?'

'Tell you in a moment,' Masha said, and she washed her face and hands and armpits. Later, she regretted very much that she hadn't told Wallu a lie. But how was she to know that Eevroen had come out of his stupor enough to hear what she said? If only she hadn't been so furious that she'd kicked him ... but regrets were a waste of time, though there wasn't a human alive who didn't indulge in them.

She had no sooner finished telling her mother what had happened with Benna when she heard a grunt behind her. She turned to see Eevroen swaying in front of the curtains, a stupid grin on his fat face. The face once so beloved.

Eevroen reeled towards her, his hands out as if he intended to grab her. He spoke thickly but intelligibly enough.

'Why'n't you go after the rat? If you caught it, we coulda been rich!'

'Go back to sleep,' Masha said. 'This has nothing to do with you.'

'Nothin do wi' me?' Eevroen bellowed. 'Wha' you mean? I'm your husband! Wha'ss yoursh ish mine. I wan' tha' jewel!'

'You damned fool,' Masha said, trying to keep from screaming so that the children wouldn't wake and the neighbours wouldn't hear, 'I don't have the jewel. There was no way I could get it - if there ever was any.'

Eevroen put a finger alongside his nose and winked the left eye. 'If there wa' ever any, heh? Masha, you tryna hoi' ou' on me? You go' the jewel, and you lyin' to you' mo ... mo ... mama.'

'No, I'm not lying!' she screamed, all reason for caution having deserted her quite unreasonably. 'You fat stinking pig! I've had a terrible time, I almost got killed, and all you can think about is the jewel! Which probably doesn't exist! Benna was dying! He didn't know what he was talking about! I never saw the jewel! And...'

Eevroen snarled, 'You tryna keep i' from me!' and he charged her.

She could easily have evaded him, but something swelled up in her and took over, and she seized a baked-clay water jug from a shelf and brought it down hard over his head. The jug didn't break, but Eevroen did. He fell face forwards. Blood welled from his scalp; he snored.

By then the children were awake, sitting up, wide-eyed, but silent. Maze children learned at an early age not to cry easily.

Shaking, Masha got down on her knees and examined the wound. Then she rose and went to the rag rack and returned with some dirty ones,/ no use wasting clean ones on him, and stanched the wound. She felt his pulse; it was beating steadily enough for a drunkard who'd just been knocked out with a severe blow.