The Hunt

6

The Hunt

    The hunt got under way about six. Rather late, but considering they’d been up so late last night... To the younger men’s surprise, the burly Representative M’Klui’shke’aigh fronted up for it. A bit bleary-eyed, and yawning, but game.

    Only Dh’aaych’llyai’n, frankly unshaven, and yawning his head off, was outspoken enough to ask the man if he’d ever been on a hunt before. M’Klui’shke’aigh gave him a sardonic look, but replied simply: “No.”

    One or two of the aristocrats glanced at one another and there were some faint shrugs, but Dh’aaych said earnestly: “Then take my advice, old fellow: fill a flask!”

    “Thank you, Lord Dh’aaych’llyai’n, I’ll do that.” He produced a small flask from the hip pocket of his very new nyr-suede breeches forthwith.

    “And if your head’s anything like mine,” added Dh’aaych solemnly: “fill your guts with yi’ish. Never mind if you feel you can’t face the muck. Creates a foundation, you see.”

    “So my mother always told me. –Yes, I will have some, thanks, Lord Mk-L’ster,” he added with a smile as Drouwh, lips twitching very slightly, offered him a bowl.

    The Lady Shn’aillaigh was sipping fl'oouu tea by the kitchen fire. She came over to the big, scrubbed table at this and said to M’Klui’shke’aigh in a mild voice: “Not ‘Lord Mk-L’ster’, when we’re on his clan lands, Mr M’Klui’shke’aigh. Just ‘Mk-L’ster’.”

    “Thank you, Lady Shn’aillaigh,” he said drily. “I'll remember that.” He sprinkled his yi’ish with the traditional dried khyai’llh herb, and began to eat.

    Shn’aillaigh watched him silently, sipping her fl'oouu tea. After a moment she said: “Where did you grow up, Mr M’Klui’shke’aigh?"

    “In a back slum of South Wh’sh-fh’r, Lady,” he replied politely. "But if you’re wondering where I learnt to eat yi’ish with the khyai’llh herb, my mother was an Islander from North Rh’air, in the High Frwm.”

    “Pity she left, she could be a shareholder in R’rt Fh’laiin’s cursed limited company as we speak,” she noted drily.

    The heavy man’s mouth twitched. “Aye.”

    “Your mother’s an Islander?” asked Dh’aaych with interest.

    “Was. Yes, my Lord.”

    “Call me Dh’aaych, for the old gods’ sake!” he said with his careless laugh.

    The older man flushed a little but replied steadily: “Fine. I’m Sh’n.”

    Dh’aaych began to fill the row of flasks on the table with uissh. “Chased xrillion,” he noted, picking up M’Klui’shke’aigh’s. “Wonder how they do that?”

    “I’m told it’s blob technology, but don’t ask me how.”

    Drouwh came over to the table again and said with a smile: “I’ve recently been informed the Feddos say ‘blob culturing’, rather than 'blob technology’. Or just 'engineering.’ –Though it could have been a leg-pull,” he added thoughtfully.

    “No, I believe that is right, my Lord,” he said with a smile.

    “Just ‘Lord’,” murmured Shn’aillaigh.

    “Have some yi’ish, Shn’aillaigh,” said Drouwh without emphasis.

    “You know cursed well it gives me hives!” she snapped.

    His lips twitched and he said to M’Klui’shke’aigh: “So much for our ancient traditions, eh?”

    “Indeed, my Lord. Possibly the blood’s run thin.” The heavy shoulders shook a little but his face was bland.

    “Aye. The last of the U’Rhy’iior’thns,” agreed Drouwh.

    “Apart from the idiot cousin,” put in Dh’aaych. “How is he, Shn’aillaigh?” he added kindly.

    She made a face. “He’s been watching the Kiddies’ Service again. Now he thinks he's that new Feddo thing they’re bringing in, in all the Mk-Strt & Brown outlets—Big Blobbo.”

    Dh’aaych choked, and the Representative swallowed.

    “What?” said Drouwh blankly.

    “You really have been living in another world, old boy!” said his old friend in a shaken voice. “It’s some huge toy the kids can bounce on. Made of one of those Feddo artificially processed things.” He screwed caps on flasks.

    Shn’aillaigh pocketed hers. –The Representative had already observed she drank like a man, so he didn’t react. She was also dressed like a man, in a plain creamy pullover of natural hggl wool and pale fawn nyr-suede breeches, but that didn’t mean she looked in the least like a man. “Something like that,” she said with a sigh. “Poor old A’ailh’stay’hr.”

    “What about this Feddo place you’re thinking of sending him to, though?” asked the kindly Dh’aaych, handing out flasks. “It sounds as if it’ll be able to help him.”

    R’rt Fh’laiin took his, yawning, and said: “Won’t it cost a megazillion IG credits, though?”

    “Yes. Maybe when I get the pay-off from the Lower Frwm deal— Well, we’ll see.”

    “What Feddo place is this, Lady Shn’aillaigh?” asked Sh’n politely, setting down his bowl.

    “Oh—Mullgon’ya; I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard—”

    But the Representative had produced a small wkli-shell card case from the inside pocket of his brand-new hand-woven hggl wool hunting jacket. (Rather too bright a blue, certain eyes had registered.) “Mention my name there,” he said. “The Lord R’jt Vt R’aam Memorial Nursing-Home is the best in the two galaxies for humanoid problems. They know me there, you'll find them most helpful.”

    Shn’aillaigh had gone very red. “Thank you, Sh’n,” she said stiffly.

    Dh’aaych laid a fleeting hand on the older man’s shoulder. “That’ll be where you sent your sister,” he noted.

    M’Klui’shke’aigh was not a naïve man: he knew the cursed Lords had eyes and ears everywhere; but at this he replied in a very shaken voice indeed: “That’s right.”

    “Did it help?” demanded Shn’aillaigh abruptly.

    He gave her a little bow and replied: “They successfully arrested the physical disease, yes, my Lady. Apart from that, M’rh’aiiy’gh was in a very depressed mental state. So far they’ve managed a seventy percent cure.”

    “That’s very good!” said Dh’aaych, smiling encouragingly at him.

    “Aye. More than I ever expected.” The Representative stowed his flask away slowly.

    There was a little pause. Everyone was getting into their outer garments, and those who had brought their dogs were wandering out to their vehicles to fetch them. R’rt Fh’laiin had called his groom in to help him with his buckled boots.

    “How long was she there?” said Shn’aillaigh gruffly.

    M’Klui’shke’aigh replied unemotionally as the others went out: “She's still there, my Lady. One commits a person to the Mullgon’ya nursing-homes for life, or until cured. It’s been seven of our years, now.”

    Her lips tightened. “I see.”

    “Your cousin’s case isn’t complicated by any physical problems, I believe?”

    “No.” Shn’aillaigh turned on her heel and strode out.

    Sh’n followed slowly, drawing on his new grpplybeast leather gloves. They were rather stiff, and he worked at the leather as he followed the red-gold head onto the lawn.

    The weak rays of the rising sun were just beginning to filter through the delicate spring foliage, and there was a little ground mist. The sky was still pearly, a little clouded in the west. Sh’n took a deep breath of the pure, fl’oouu-scented air. He’d never been interested in country life, but now he thought, What a beautiful day, staring at the Lady of U’Rhy’iior’thn standing in a patch of sun. Perhaps there was something in this country-house business, after all. We-ell, after Federation… When he’d divorced that bitch, Gl’nndha! Thank the old gods that Federation hadn't come too late for him. Mother, the old gods bless her, had been right about Gl’nndha: she had only wanted him for what he could give her. Mother had been right about most things. If only— Never mind. Water under the bridge.

    “Come on, Sh’n!” called Dh’aaych, and Sh’n, knowing he was about to make a fool of himself, he’d never shot at a thing in his life, went over and took a bow from him.

    High in the gnarled old fl’oouu tree T’m was still asleep, in spite of the activity below them. K’t-Ln had dozed for a couple of hours after the house lights went out but had woken as soon as the kitchen chimney started to smoke again. She watched sardonically as the hunters went off. They wouldn’t get any nyr in that direction! Maybe they were only after ghrr or lop-ears. Small game. She sniffed a little.

    To her astonishment the Mk-D’rm’d’s groom remained at his post on the back verandah. After a while he relieved himself over by a tree on the far side of the vehicle-paddock. K’t-Ln made a face at his back. Then she settled down for a good think, ignoring both the empty feeling in the pit of her belly and the other, stronger feeling that she’d need to piss soon, too. If The Lord hadn’t had a dog on the place she’d have done it in the tree.

    Shn’aillaigh had refused laughingly to join Drouwh’s party. She knew all the forests of Mk-L’ster like the back of her hand: she, Drouwh, Dh’aaych, and three or four of the others present had been playmates since their cradles. Originally the group had included several other girls. They had all grown up, become débutantes, and respectably married. Shn’aillaigh had grown up and, to her guardians’ distress, though the leading débutante of her year, had refused to marry any of the mild-mannered, suitable young gentlemen they'd found for her. When she’d come of age she’d embarked on a fairly wild career for a few years but then, though still engaging in wild and most unsuitable exploits—lifter-racing at tree-top level in the grounds of the Royal snow-palace was the least of it—had taken the reins of her mouldering estates into her own capable hands and, very gradually, had started to make the farms pay. Largely by ploughing every aylh of profit back into them, a practice hitherto unheard of on the Clan U'Rhy’iior’thn lands. The U’Rhy’iior’thns were unanimously agreed that the Lady was a hard woman, but a fair one: and a better man than her father or grandfather had ever been!

    She had married at the age of twenty-seven: a charming, spendthrift creature so like her late father that the clan had very nearly risen over it. But his chief lands adjoined one of the U'Rhy’iior’thn reaches, and if the Lady had a male child—Shn’aillaigh had had a son within less than a year of the marriage and there had been wild rejoicing in the U’Rhy’iior’thn reaches. The child was automatically Lord of U’Rhy’iior’thn, and would be Lord Kh’ain-Rh’uissh when the weak creature that was his father died.

    Two years later the father had died. There were those that whispered that the Lady had fixed it, with or without the help of a visit to the Old Woman of Slrw—but Shn’aillaigh had had no need to fix anything: Bhrs Kh’ain-Rh’uissh was a fool who was more than capable of filling his lungs with snuhl and then going lifter-racing in a gathering storm without any help at all. So much for The Kh’ain-Rh’uissh. Long live The Kh’ain-Rh’uissh.

    Six months after that the child died of the blood disease that he'd inherited from his father's family and all his lands reverted to Shn’aillaigh, who thus became Lady Kh’ain-Rh’uissh, Lady of U’Rhy’iior’thn. It might have been said that she had achieved one of her goals in life. But Shn’aillaigh, though she hadn’t managed to love the sickly little boy very much, he was far too like his father, was mad with frustration and a mixture of grief and guilt. After the boy’s funeral she took off in her lifter and disappeared for six months.

    That had been getting on for two years ago. Shn’aillaigh was apparently over it. She had plunged herself into preparations for Federation Day, divesting herself with a grim determination of the fifty percent of her lands that was the minimum required by IG law in order for hereditary owners of enclosed clan or tribal lands to be able to stake a valid Prior Claim to the other fifty percent. Experts in IG law pointed out that the law favoured the hereditary owners to a considerable degree: it was fifty percent by area, not value. But this was because the IG-value of any given stretch of territory was almost impossible to calculate from one microsecond to the next: the markets changed so rapidly, and what was worthless land at one moment could be a mineral-bearing fortune the next. So on Old Rthfrdia a lot of unproductive land was being transferred to the clanspeople.

    But a lot still wasn’t: there were those who were gambling that the right-wing faction’s plan to restore the old system by a Unanimous Parliamentary Decree after the Referendum would succeed. Shn’aillaigh wasn’t such a fool. Leaving aside the question of whether the people would even choose anything remotely like the present parliamentary system, the Parliament of Old Rthfrdia had never voted unanimously for anything except increases in its own honoraria in all its recorded history!

    In case of trouble, she was taking the precaution of transferring her valuables to places of security. Most of these pieces were hideous, true: the old gods knew she didn’t fancy eating her dinner off a tortured hunk of carved quog, under the gaze of a dissolute U’Rhy’iior’thn painted somewhere around 7,000 O.R. with a surprised-looking hunting dog at his knee. And the Kh’ain-Rh’uissh lot were even worse!

    She forged off into the undergrowth of the forest with her dog, Whitey, ignoring the fact that three of the younger men had followed her. Shn’aillaigh wasn’t interested in kna-brained young idiots in their twenties who fancied that Drouwh Mk-L’ster was the coming man and had thrown in their lot with him on the strength of—the old gods knew what! The fact that he’d managed to get an off-world permit a year or so back to fetch his mother some mok shit for her cursed rose gardens, apparently. Or the fact that he owned the biggest mineral-processing plant on the planet.

    Well, good luck to them: Old Rthfrdia had no xrillion, very little silver, a reasonable amount of copper, about enough gold to re-gild the cursed Royal Palace in central Wh’sh-fh’r once every hundred years, and megahunks—megahunks—of pwld. It was similar to a low-grade pewter, and apart from the local artisans, no-one in the Known Universe wanted it. Shn’aillaigh had maintained when Drouwh had opened the plant that he was mad, and she still maintained it. Presumably it was yet another of his cursed do-good plans to provide employment for the countryfolk. Yes, well, if pwld-processing in the Lower Cwmb was what they enjoyed, let ’em get on with it!

    She strode through the undergrowth, scowling, reflecting that in many ways Drouwh was as bad as the cursed Regent, obsessed with do-good kna shit. A little smah that had been pecking at a worm-hole fluttered up from under her feet. The kna-worm incautiously poked its head out of the hole and Shn’aillaigh stamped on it viciously for good luck.

    It took her about twenty minutes to shake off the dim young men, and then she and Whitey were on their own. They hunted happily for the next three hours as the sun slowly rose in a pale blue sky, dotted with fleecy white clouds. It was a perfect spring day. In the depths of the forest it was still cool under the big trees but exertion was warming Shn’aillaigh, and after a while she threw the heavy green-grey wool cloak back on one shoulder and pinned it with its big quog brooch. She wasn’t after bigger game today, they’d started too late to sight the nyr in the distant depths of the forest, so she contented herself with three brace of ghrr and two lop-ears, cutting off the ears as Whitey's share of the bag, as was the custom.

    It must have been about ten o’clock when she came into a little clearing near a brook and found Sh’n M’Klui’shke’aigh sitting on the ground with his right boot off.

    “Blisters?” she said with a grin.

    The heavy-set man looked up and went rather red. “Yes. Uh—forgive me, my Lady—”

    He made to rise but Shn’aillaigh said briskly: “Don’t get up, you idiot. And for the old gods’ sake, don’t call me ‘my Lady!’”

    “Should I say ‘Lady of U’Rhy’iior’thn?’ Or just ‘Lady?’"

    Flushing a little, she came and knelt beside him. “No. Shn’aillaigh. –Since we may well be on course to be thrown to the bears together!” she added with a laugh.

    “Yes,” he acknowledged with a twinkle.

    “Pity we had to kidnap you-know-who,” she conceded casually, lifting his foot gingerly.

    “Short of assassination, there was no other way of stopping him overhearing all our plans,” he pointed out drily.

    “I’d have voted for assassination: kna-worm’s litter!”

    “Mm. Why do you dislike him so much, if I may ask, Shn’aillaigh?”

    Her lips tightened. “Oh—he once turned down what I considered a rather flattering offer!”

    The Regent was a fair bit older than Shn’aillaigh. Though rather younger than Sh’n M’Klui’shke’aigh. “I see,” he said cautiously.

    She sat back on her heels and sighed a little. “It wasn’t the refusal, so much,” she said, brushing back a wisp of the thick, straight, tawny hair that had escaped from its neat ponytail, “it was the way he did it, the—the do-gooder prude!"

    M’Klui’shke’aigh thought he really did see, this time. He made a murmuring noise of understanding.

    “He said when I’d learned my body and mind were a gift from the old gods and neither were meant to be abused, and that my rank and possessions were a—a loan, not a right, that meant I owed the common people more, not less, then perhaps I’d be a fit mate for a decent man!” she said angrily. A lump rose in her throat. She swallowed hard.

    Sh’n rather agreed with the do-gooder prude on all these counts, but he didn’t say so. He looked at the lovely oval face with its faint scattering of tiny freckles across the straight nose and the rosy cheeks, and at the big green eyes that were sparkling with angry, unshed tears, and said: “If it isn’t an impertinent question, how old were you at the time?"

    She made a wry little grimace. “I suppose it is an impertinent question, but I don't mind telling you. I was about twenty-two, and cursed stupid with it.”

    He looked at her doubtfully. “Were you very much in love with him?” –He didn’t quite dare to add “my dear,” she might take it as offensively patronising.

    “Oh—no, I suppose not!” she said impatiently. “I was cursed ambitious for my family name, and I fancied being the Regent’s Lady, and—well, he’s a cursed attractive man.” She shrugged again, and got up. “I’ll get you some khyai’llh leaves for that heel. Don’t move.”

    She vanished into the forest, with a casual instruction to the big dog to “Guard!” Whitey came over and lay by Sh’n, his eyes fixed unwinkingly on the man’s face. Sh’n didn’t dare to pat him, he’d never until today been in the close proximity of a hunting dog. He sat there, reflecting on several points. Had she meant the same khyai’llh that Mother had used on their morning yi’ish? –And frequently midday and supper-time yi’ish, as well: the M’Klui’shke’aighs had been poorer than the smah-birds...

    The Regent was a cursed attractive man, yes, and in fact—though, Sh’n reflected drily, it apparently hadn’t occurred to any of these aristocrats—very like Drouwh Mk-L’ster, whom the Lady, according to Court gossip, had fixed on as this year’s candidate. Perhaps the resemblance, the mind-reading thing apart, had never been remarked upon because their colouring was so very different? Most people never looked below the surface of things. Mk-L’ster was the red-gold, pale-skinned type that was commonest amongst their people. Prince Rh’aiiy’hn, however, had hair of the very darkest auburn—his family had Mk-D’rm’d blood, and dark auburn hair was often the mark of a Mk-D’rm’d. And the Regent’s skin was much darker than was usually seen on Old Rthfrdia, almost a yellowish shade, tanning deeply in summer. But the two men’s facial structure was identical: high cheekbones, long cheeks that were distinctively Old Rthfrdian, but with an unusual combination of widely winged jaws and pointed chins. They both had long, narrow-lipped mouths and slender noses. Perhaps the most striking point of resemblance, however, was the startling blue of their eyes: a true blue, not the green-blue of the Islanders, which Sh’n’s mother had had and he had inherited from her, but as azure as a summer sky, a shade which Sh’n had never seen at all amongst their people.

    It had occurred to him more than once that if the rumour about the Regent’s father being an off-worlder was true, then it was possible, not merely that Mk-L’ster’s father was also an off-worlder, which he had often thought must be the case, but that he was the same off-worlder. Sh’n, with all his contacts, had no idea who; Mh’aaiivh of Old Rthfrdia knew how to keep her counsel.

    He jumped when the young woman returned with a handful of leaves. “Those are big leaves,” he murmured, as she knelt by his side again.

    “Well, it’s a big blister!” she said with a laugh.

    “Yes. Ow!”

    “Sorry. You have to get the poison out.”

    He winced as she ruthlessly emptied the blister and applied the leaves with an ungentle hand, tying them on with a length of string produced from the pocket of her pale fawn breeches. Finally she said: “There!”

    “Thanks,” he murmured.

    “The pain’ll ease in a bit.” She stood up and unpinned the big cloak. “Raise your bum a bit. You’d better sit on this: the ground’s very damp at this time of year, you don’t want rheumatism on top of that heel."

    “Thank you,” he said with an effort: he had never before heard a lady say “bum.”

    She spread the cloak and he eased himself onto it with a sigh.

    Shn’aillaigh sat down beside him and produced a handful of dried vtt’lberries from a pocket. “Want some?”

    “Thank you. Uh—what are they?"

    “You really are a townee, aren’t you? Dried vtt’lberries, of course!”

    “Oh.” He’d had vtt’lberry cordial, which was nice, and vtt'lberry wine, which was horrible. He tried one cautiously. It was more like the cordial; he smiled at her. “Nice. Now, since we’ve decided I really am a townee, tell me: are these khyai’llh leaves you’ve put on my foot the plant that’s used for tea or for sprinkling on yi'ish?”

    “You’re joking! Aiyee, you’re not,” she said.—Sh’n had never heard a lady say “aiyee” before, either.—“Yes, of course it’s the same plant! These are the coarse outer leaves.”

    “I see.” She had been right, and the pain and heat in his heel were noticeably easing. The narrow green-blue Islander eyes narrowed still further. An analgesic? Mm...

    “What?” she said.

    “Oh—nothing.” He smiled at her and said politely: “Did you catch anything?”

    “Bagged three brace of ghrr and two lop-ears,” she replied, opening the big leather satchel she’d dumped on the grass near the watchful dog.

    Sh’n looked politely. “The dog doesn’t seem interested,” he noticed.

    “He's had his ears. He knows that’s his portion.” She looked at him in some amusement. “Haven’t you ever seen a hunting dog before, townee?"

    “No. He’s most impressive.”

    Shn’aillaigh looked at him uncertainly and he laughed a little and said: “No—I really mean it! All that meat, and he’s ignoring it!”

    “Trained. And bred to it, of course.”

    “Mm.” Just how much would her spoilt way of life change in the next few years? Realistically, he supposed, not much: privilege was privilege, all over the two galaxies.

    She lay down on the cloak beside him, propping her head on her hand, smiling lazily up at him. A shaft of sunlight struck a deep blue gleam from what he had thought a mere pwld dome in the big cloak-brooch on her shoulder, and he looked at it with more attention and said on a sharp note: “Is that a quog brooch?”

    “Mm? Oh—yes. Hideous thing, really! It was my great-grandfather’s, I think.”

    A frown appeared between Sh’n’s thick brows. Shn’aillaigh looked up at him with her pretty face a guileless mask. He was really quite an attractive man, in a blunt, brutish sort of way. Lovely long, sea-green eyes—though they didn’t peer through a forest of gold, as did Drouwh’s azure ones—and a firm, square jaw, she liked that on a man. His mouth gave nothing away: well, he wasn’t the sort of man, thought Shn’aillaigh of U’Rhy’iior’thn with an inner smile, who would ever give anything away. A hard man, a fighter: one had to admire him, really...

    “From your estates?” he said abruptly.

    “What? Oh, the stone! I suppose so, the reaches are full of it,” she said carelessly.

    Not to his knowledge, they weren’t. Sh’n hesitated. But she had thrown in her lot with them, after all. And there was no way he himself could get his hands on a piece of the action in the reaches, he was no clansman. So finally he said slowly: “Lady, do you still own the place that rock came from?”

    “Uh—no idea. –I thought you’d dropped the ‘Lady’ kna shit?"

    Sh’n’s heavy cheeks reddened. “Sorry—ingrained in me, I suppose.”

    “Yes,” she said, touching his hand fleetingly. “What is all this about quog, Sh’n?”

    “Well,” he said, swallowing a little, “there’s very little of it in the Known Universe, you know.”

    “Can’t use it for anything, though.”

    “Uh—no. Well, I suppose there are only a few precious stones that can be used for anything. Um—diamonds.” He looked at the beautiful big green thing on her right hand and smiled and said: “Not emeralds, certainly.”

    “No. –Isn't there some race that worships them? Strange creatures, they must be,” she said idly. “Anyway, quog’s hardly in that class!” She gave a little laugh.

    “Not the ordinary greenish stuff, no. Quogite, it is, really: barely semi-precious.”

    Shn’aillaigh shrugged impatiently: she knew that, even the countryfolk of the U’Rhy’iior’thn reaches had cloak brooches of the green stuff. “So?”

    “That very dark blue-green often accompanies—uh—the shade the off-worlders call shlaa.”

    “What?” she said blankly.

    “Shlaa. I don’t know that I’ve got the pronunciation right,” he said dubiously: “I was never any good at languages, and my Intergalactic’s worse than basic. It’s— Well, frankly, Lady,” he said with a twinkle, “I’m worse at colours than I am at languages, but if I had to define it, I’d say it was midway between an apricot colour and the shade in your cheeks at this very moment!” He gave a tiny laugh.

    Shn’aillaigh frowned. “Pinkish? I’ve never seen—No, hang on, that hideous old dinner-set at the Keep’s sort of pinkish. Well, with a nasty kind of orange-ish look to it, don’t know if that’s what you— What in the name of the witches of U’Rhy’iior’thn is the matter with you?”

    “Shn’aillaigh,” he croaked: “did you say you’ve got a whole dinner-set of”—he gulped—“shlaa-tinted quog?”

    “Yes—at least, a set of plates. About two dozen, I think. What is all this: are they worth something?”

    “Uh—yes. Well, if the set is shlaa, it’s worth—well, his ransom, certainly.”

    “Eh? Oh! I get it! Uh—you’re not serious, are you?”

    “Yes.”

    “Where could I get them valued?” she said simply.

    Sh’n’s lips twitched, but he replied soberly enough: “You couldn’t, on Old Rthfrdia. Any decent jeweller’s off-world would value the set for you. I don’t guarantee they’d offer you a fair price, though,” he added drily.

    “No. Um—Feddo insurance company?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

    “Possibly. One of the reputable ones...” He rubbed his square jaw. “I think I’d be inclined to take it to one of the big arts and antiques auction places. There's a branch of Kyblzkw’chkwz’s on New Rthfrdia: that would probably be the nearest.”

    “New Rthfrdia’s the two galaxies’ most boring do-gooder dump,” she said automatically.

    “They’ve made an intergalactic fortune out of their name for fair-dealing, certainly,” Sh’n agreed drily.

    “Yeah. Well, thanks for your advice. After Feddo Day, eh?” She grinned at him, sat up, and tidied her ponytail.

    “No—listen, Shn’aillaigh, you don’t understand!”

    “Yes, I do, Sh’n!” she said with a laugh. “I lie low with my dinner plates until Feddo Day, then I dash off to New Rthfrdia, taking the plates as incidental luggage—”

    “No. I grant you that you’d clear a tidy sum, pretty Lady,” said Sh’n, grinning at her— Shn’aillaigh blinked—“but two things would immediately happen: (a) your lands would be overrun with prospectors staking First Claims, and (b) the IG Minerals Commission would dispatch a Survey Fleet. And very shortly thereafter, Old Rthfrdia would be declared an intergalactic treasure world.”

    “What?” she said with an incredulous laugh.

    “It happened to Vvlvania,” he murmured.

    “Yeah, back in my great-great-grandfather’s day! Anyway, isn’t it an uninhabited dump?”

    “No, but it’s certainly undesirable. Huge xrillion mines and a giant Feddo penal settlement.”

    “Now, look, Sh’n—”

    “No, you look,” he said, putting a firm hand on one grubby fawn nyr-hide knee. “Were the plates mined on your estate?”

    “Um, well, probably,” she said weakly. “They made everything out of the local rock back in those days.”

    “Well, what we need to do is find out exactly where it was mined, and if we can't figure that out, find out where that dark blue came from.” He nodded at the brooch on her shoulder. “Then let’s just hope it’s from a part of your estate that you haven’t given away.”

    “I haven’t signed over any of the reaches. It’s mainly the U’Rhy’iior’thn and Kh’ain-Rh’uissh lands in the Far Cwmb that I've turned over to the clans. The quog mostly comes from around the old keep in County U’Rhy’iior’thn. The hills are full of it. It’s shockingly poor country, and too steep even for hggls. Only a few mountain cappr’his and snr-cats live there. And the sub-arctic lop-ears, of course—ever seen them?” He shook his head; she smiled and said: “They’re pretty little beasts: snow-white, with big black spots on the tip of each ear. –No, quiet, boy, lie down!” she said as the big dog looked at her eagerly and sniffed the air. He was almost human, really, thought Sh’n.

    “Almost human, isn’t he?” she said pleasedly, and he jumped, and gasped: “Yes!”

    “Better than human, dogs don’t betray you,” she said grimly, and Sh'n nodded silently.

    After a moment she said slowly: “It’ll be difficult to search the area quietly. Well, the clansfolk won’t mean to talk, but nothing ever happens up there, and they’re all cursed nosy.”

    “Mm-mm... Summer’s coming, what about a walking tour?"

    “Brilliant, Sh’n!” she said caustically. “Do you know a qualified geologist—no, hang on, he’d have to be an IG-qualified geologist, wouldn’t he?—a Feddo geologist who might just happen to be available for a walking tour in remotest County U’Rhy’iior’thn this summer?”

    Sh’n’s mouth twitched. He’d long since prepared for precisely this sort of eventuality—though not expecting it to crop up at quite this moment. “Yes, I do, actually. My eldest son.”

    “What?” she gulped.

    “Mm-hm. Back in the days before Pre-Fed I had a sort of idea that it might be useful to have an IG-qualified geologist in the family one day. So I sent him off to New Rthfrdia.”

    Tensely she said: “Can we get him back, though?"

    “He came back well before the x’nb web, Lady,” he said primly.

    “I might have known! –How old is he, for the clan’s sake?"

    It was a long time since Sh’n had heard that expression—it had been one of his mother's. “Twenty-five. He’s done a Fourth School degree on top of his Third School qualification.”

    “Two degrees, at twenty-five?”

    “Yes. Well, he also attended Second School there: it gave him a very good start. He boarded with a very pleasant family."

    “You—you were thinking of all this that long ago?” she said faintly.

    “Lady Shn’aillaigh, I’ve been thinking of all this since almost the first moment I was old enough not to take a bent aylh. M’hl was eleven when he left home."

    “Thundering herds of grpplybeasts,” she said weakly.

    “Yes, Lady.”

    “Drop it!” she shouted, and Sh’n grinned.

    After a moment she said: “It must have set you back a fair bit. You'd have had to pay non-Federation school fees, surely?"

    “Oh, aye. My wife’s never forgiven me. –Oh, not for sending the boy off-world so young, Gl’nndha was never that sort. For wasting all that money on his education.”

    She just nodded and said briskly: “Well, he’d be ideal, if he’s free to come with us.”

    “Yes. –Us?”

    “No Feddo geologist by the name of M’Klui’shke’aigh is going to roam my lands unescorted picking up hunks of anything that looks interesting,” she said grimly.

    Sh’n’s lips twitched but he said sedately: “One of the reasons I chose a school on New Rthfrdia was their stern moral code.”

    “Get out of it!” she scoffed.

    He chuckled but said: “No, truly. I didn’t want to invest all that money in a kid who’d play me false at the end of it. You can trust M’hl.”

   “Good.” She held out a slender grubby hand and said: “Is it a bargain, then?”

    Sh’n M’Klui’shke’aigh, hard-headed businessman though he was, looked into the big green eyes and felt his senses swim. “We’d have to work out a proper fee,” he said weakly.

    “Yes, of course.” She was still holding out her hand.

    Sh’n took it gently. “It’s a bargain, Lady Shn’aillaigh.”

    “A bargain, Sh’n M’Klui’shke’aigh,” she agreed seriously.

    Rather shaken, Sh’n realised it was the old country formula, that the simple folk had still used when they first came to town, when he was a boy. A bargain until death, in fact.

    She released his hand and said: “When can you start?"

    He stared out over the sunny clearing. “M’hl can come whenever you’re ready for him. I don’t think I can. I’ll have to be in town until the Summer Recess. Anyway, if you seriously intend going, I’d only hold the pair of you up. Well—look at me!” He indicated his leaf-bandaged foot, and gave a sour little laugh.

    “You should have broken those boots in.”

    “Aye, I’d have looked good striding round the city in a pair of buckled boots with shin-knives!” he agreed caustically.

    She smiled. “Yes. –What did you imagine you were going to do with this, Sh’n?" she added, drawing the little knife delicately from the sheath on his discarded boot.

    “Kill tiny defenceless animals,” he admitted.

    “Mm-hm.”

    He gave in and asked weakly: “What in the name of the old gods are they for?”

    “Well, these tiny toothpickers aren’t for anything—though this one's got a decent edge on it,” she conceded, feeling it with a cautious thumb. “These are ceremonial size—Court wear! But a proper shin-knife’s used for skinning,”—she slid his back—“and occasional throat-slitting, when necessary. –Usually not of one’s enemies, though that has been known to occur,” she said on a dry note. “No, if you’ve missed your shot and the beast’s suffering.”

    “I see.”

    Shn’aillaigh drew her own blade and said: “Hungry? Must be almost lunchtime.” She squinted briefly at the sky.

    Sh’n glanced at his expensive off-world chrono-blob and it immediately reported: Eleven-twenty, local time.

    “Wish they wouldn't do that,” she said, and he smiled, and nodded. “Well?” she added.

    Sh’n admitted he was hungry and she gave him a handful of dried vtt’lberries to be going on with, scrambled up, and began collecting wood. She made a fire competently in the centre of the clearing, returned to his side and said: “They’re good in clay, but it takes too long. These are still fresh, they’ll be okay on the spit.” She drew an ear-less body from the leather bag. “All right, townee, don’t watch!” she added with a laugh as he gave an involuntary wince.

    “No, I'd like to see you skin it.”

    “Well, hold on a minute.” She vanished into the forest, to return with a few large leaves and some big handfuls of grass. The dog watched anxiously. “Yes, all right, old boy: liver, eh?” she said. He thumped his tail and gave a little whine. “Loves the liver,” she said to Sh’n.

    It would not have been true to say that he enjoyed the subsequent proceedings. Or the smell when she bundled up the discarded guts in the grass and leaves and threw the bundle on the fire.

    “Have a shot!” she said with a little laugh, returning to his side after arranging the carcass on sticks over the fire.

    He produced his flask. Before he could offer her a shot, she’d produced hers. “Your health, fair Lady,” he said formally, but Shn’aillaigh smiled into his eyes and said: “The clan.”

    “The clan,” agreed Sh’n limply, and drank.

    “‘M'Klui’shke’aigh,’” she said thoughtfully.

    “Yes?”

    “Not you, idiot! The name! Aren’t you Clan Kh’ain-Rh’uissh?"

    “I don’t know. –If I am,” he said politely, “does that make you my Lady?"

    The green eyes sparkled but she said severely: “No, that makes me The Lady, you should know better, Sh’n!”

    He laughed, and said: “My mother's people were Clan Mk-D’rm’d. But I think on her father's side they were Clan Rh’n’lhd, is that a clan?"

    “Two galaxies, yes: old Lord Fh’Ly'haiyn and Rh'n'lhd, you must have met him!"

    “Yes,” he said grimly.

    “The most conservative old bear in the Lords’ Circle."

    “Yes.”

    Shn’aillaigh sighed, and lay down flat on her back on the cloak, hands linked behind her head. “Let’s forget politics for a while, shall we?”

    Sh’n looked down at her with a twinkle in the long green-blue eyes. “Certainly. What shall we talk about?”

    “Idiot,” she said mildly, smiling up at him.

    Most unexpectedly the hard-headed Sh’n M’Klui’shke’aigh felt a little stab of vivid regret for—the carefree youth he’d never had? The sweet young womanhood the wild Lady of U’Rhy'iior’thn had never had? The old world they were losing? Perhaps all of that—and looked away from her, swallowing hard.

    “What?” she said, touching his thigh.

    “Nothing.”

    “Not nothing, Sh’n.”

    “Oh,” he said with an impatient frown, “I suppose I was wishing you were a girl from the hills, aged sixteen and innocent with it, and I was a boy of eighteen, and we’d caught our lunch together and when we’d eaten it, were going home to— Forget it.”

    After a minute she said slowly: “Home to what?”

    “Is it relevant?” he said impatiently.

    “Probably not, but I’d just like to know.”

    He scowled at the fire and said: “Home to your mother’s cottage, is what I was thinking, to bring in the wash from the slope at the back of the house and help her with the soup and kettle bread for our suppers.”

    Shn’aillaigh touched his thigh again very softly, and said: “Is that how your mother used to tell it, Sh’n?”

    “Yes,” he said, blinking angrily. “Go ahead, my Lady: laugh!”

    “I’m not laughing. I think I’m almost crying,” she said, essaying a smile.

    Sh’n looked down at her and found she was indeed, smiling through tears. He sat up very straight, throwing his head back, drew up his knees a little and clenched his hards hard on the expensive nyr-hide of the brand-new breeches.

    Shn’aillaigh looked up at him in silence and knew she wanted him and knew that she wasn’t going to make a move. But she couldn’t have explained why not, for the life of her. After quite a while she said: “Come up to the reaches for at least a long weekend, Sh’n. It’ll do you good to get away—camp in the open air."

    “Mm. Me and my rheumatism,” he said wryly, not looking at her.

    “If you really do get it, I’ll take you across to the Old Woman of Slrw. Though if she doesn’t like you, look out, she'll put a curse on you rather than cure the rheumatism!" she ended with a laugh.

    “Oh? Turn me into a lop-ear?”

    The dog gave an excited “Woof!”, Sh’n jumped, and Shn’aillaigh sat up and shouted: “How dare you, sir!”

    Sh’n had a startled instant and then he realised she was shouting at the dog.

    “Sorry,” she said with a grin. “Tends to get over-excited when he's had—uh—L,I,V,E,R. And you said the magic word. –Will you come?”

    He flushed. “I'd like to very much. If you can put up with me.”

    “Don’t be an idiot, would I invite you if I thought I couldn’t?” she said gruffly.

    Sh’n murmured: “No,” but he was thinking that yes, she probably would, if she thought she owed him something. He didn’t for one moment disbelieve any of the stories he'd heard about her, and he still didn’t go much on the lordship class generally. And he was far from blinded by her beauty: scores of beautiful women had thrown themselves at him for his money. But he was beginning to see that there were some good points to the lordships, and that Shn’aillaigh exemplified some of them.

    K’t-Ln had got T’m away from the lodge by shooting a thin branch from the fl’oouu tree into another tree some distance away. The man on watch had swung round and focused his attention on the noise, and they had glided away. Fifteen arm-measures away they were safe enough: the whole countryside knew the Mk-D’rm’d’s head groom was a rotten shot. They went back to their own place and K’t-Ln revealed the plan. M’ri objected in horror, and T'm reckoned she couldn’t do it, but they were a pair of kna-worm’s droppings! If they were scared, they could stay behind!

    About two minutes after that, quivers full of arrows, lassos slung over their shoulders, the three of them took off from a high tree in the direction of the hunt.

    The man’s voice called for help in her head and she knew it was Shan and strained to reach him, and couldn’t, and cried: “Shan!” And came to with a gasp in a warm, sunny room in a bed that smelled funny and was lumpy.

    “Good, you’re awake,” said a young female voice from the end of the bed.

    The vestiges of the dream dissipated, though an image of a dark-haired man with a high-cheekboned, winged-jawed face out of which slanted blue eyes watched mockingly lingered in her mind: she grasped after it vainly—

   “He locked me in, too, the Feddo-loving brute, only I can work any lock in this house with my eyes shut!” the red-haired girl perched on the end of the bed said, pouting.

    Roz could see she was a fool: she had a mind full of silly clothes and silly thoughts and silly desires; but there was only mild malice there. Automatically shielding her own mind from the creature, she said: “Who are you?”

    The red-haired girl pouted even more. “Drouwh's sister. You’re the Feddo spy, aren’t you? –They think I don't know anything, but I do!” she added loudly.

    Roz put a hand to her head and said dizzily: “I don’t think I’m a spy. I’m a Pleasure Girl. My name’s Roz, Lady.”

    “You don’t have to call me ‘Lady,’ I suppose we're in the same boat!” she said crossly. “Have you really lost your memory?”

    “Yes. Well—things keep almost coming back to me and then slipping away,” said Roz sadly.

    “I’ve never taken klupf.”

    “Very sensible,” replied Roz drily.

    The Mk-L’ster’s sister pouted again. After a moment she said: “Can you cook?”

    “No.”

    The girl scowled horribly. “There’s nothing to eat in his horrible kitchen but cold yi’ish!”

    “Oh? I had some meat soup yesterday.”

    “I can’t possibly eat meat soup for breakfast,” she said, pouting again.

    “Tough,” replied Roz laconically.

    The girl stared at her in an affronted way. Roz could feel she was trying to probe her mind. She watched her sardonically. After some time the girl’s face got very red.

    “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it's bad IG-manners to probe another being’s mind?” asked Roz without emphasis.

    “No. So what? Hardly anyone can do it except me and Drouwh, anyway!” More pouts, the creature was about the most boring being Roz had ever encountered.

    “Oh—that’s right: you’re Pre-Fed, aren’t you?” she remembered. –Galloping grqwary gizzards, had she taken the klupf to penetrate the x’nb-web, then? But why? ...Ugh, maybe she was a spy, maybe the red-haired creature was right.

    “So?” she was demanding pugnaciously.

    Roz eyed her drily. “If you read the Constitution of the Federated Worlds you’ll see that there’s a Prescribed Code of Conduct for beings with mind-reading abilities. –Not beings who can learn to use blobs, everyone can do that with a bit of practice. Beings like you and your brother. And you’ve been breaking it ever since you came into this room.”

    “So what?”

    “So you can expect a knock on your door shortly after your Referendum—I don't care whose sister you are, it makes no difference—from the IG—uh, the Federation Militia.”

    “Why? It’s not illegal to read minds, most of the two galaxies do it, it's only because we're so backward—”

    “Most of the worlds in the two galaxies have beings who can do it, yeah. Most of the beings in the two galaxies can't. The IG Militia will come and cart you off to do the Course."

    “What do you mean?” she said, nervous but defiant.

    “The Mind-Control Course.” She watched sardonically as the girl’s eyes lit up and ideas popped in and out of her fluffy head like fttzi-flies flitting over the snu fields in high summer. “Control of your own mind, asteroid-brain.”

    “How dare you call me that!” she gasped.

    “Oh, sorry, Ladyship, I thought we were in the same boat?”

    “You’re the rudest person I’ve ever met!” She got up—Roz reflected that the motion could fairly be called a flounce—and went over to the window.

    “Am I? Well, you haven’t told me your name, yet.”

    A short silence. “I thought you— I’m A’ailh’sa Mk-L’ster, of course.”

    “Pleased to meet you, A’ailh’sa Mk-L’ster. Sorry I can’t cook.”

    A’ailh’sa ignored this. “Have you ever been to J’rd’s?”

    “Uh—which one?” replied Roz weakly.

    “Any one! The big one on Playfair One!”

    “Many times.” She didn't say for what and the girl didn’t ask. Just as well, those of the visits that had been through the huge front entrance on Playway Boulevard had been exclusively to the basement-level Two Galaxies Food Hall, which sold excellent fermented laa and the best aged qwlot. The other visits had been purely on business. …What business? Roz blinked a little. “What? –Sorry.”

    “Drouwh won’t let me go. –To Playfair One!” she repeated loudly. “I’ve been to Friyria, some diplomatic friends invited us, but we spent the whole visit paying afternoon calls and attending boring old formal dinners!"

    Roz smiled a little. “Yeah.”

    “They took us to their so-called Nirvana Club, it was supposed to be like the one on Playfair Two, but it was really boring, you could only play stupid ball games or swim in their pathetic pools, don’t you just hate fluorogas pools?"

    “They’re okay.”

    “Well, I think they’re boring!”

    “What about whllubbly gell?"

    “Mother and that boring old Lady Gry’ttervill’ya wouldn’t let me go in the whllubbly pool, they said I wasn't old enough. –Don’t LAUGH!” she shouted. “Just because you’re an off-worlder and—and sophisticated and everything, doesn't mean you know EVERYTHING!”

    Roz got up. “I've probably forgotten more than you’ve ever learnt. I’m going to the hygiene cabinet. I mean the bathroom.”

    “I know you think we’re primmo—well, we’re not, see, my brother’s big lifter’s got real senso-tissues!” she cried.

    Roz replied with feeling: “I just wish someone would tell the asteroid-head to order them to come inside, then.” And went out.

    A’ailh'sa sat there pouting, muttering: “He didn’t bring it, he won’t use the big one in the countryside, he’s a boring kna-worm!"

    … “See?” she said, pouting at the yi’ish pot.

    Roz shrugged. “Your guess is as good mine, A’ailh’sa. Would the man on guard outside know how to make the food hot?”

    “Stupid R’rt Fh’laiin Mk-D’rm’d’s groom,” she muttered, kicking at the stone flags with the toe of one dainty glittering shoe. “You ask him, I can’t open the door!”

    Roz eyed her somewhat ironically, but not unkindly. R’rt Fh’laiin Mk-D’rm’d figured largely in the fluffy thoughts of little Flppu-brain. It appeared that he had a degree from an off-world Fourth School and had never noticed the little Flppu-brain except to treat it as his little sister. Roz could have overridden the commands Drouwh Mk-L’ster had given the door’s blob lock, but it occurred to her that if she really was a spy—unlikely though it seemed—it might be politic not to let on to the little Flppu-brain that she could. So she just shrugged, and began to eat cold yi’ish out of the big pot with a spoon.

    A’ailh’sa watched sulkily. “Ugh.”

    “It’s very nourishing,” said Roz calmly. She went on eating yi'ish.

    “Well, do you at least know how to make fl’oouu tea?” said A’ailh’sa on a desperate note.

    “Only in theory: one adds hot water to the dried, um, vegetable matter.”

    “Well?”

    Roz shrugged. “I don’t know how to make the water hot.”

    “It’s that stupid kettle. Only he’s let the fire go out. He—um—swings it round on a hook or—or something.”

    “Yes. Then he makes the fire come. I can do that bit.”—A’ailh’sa stared at her.—“But I think,” she said politely, “that first one must make the water come in the pan—kettle.”

    There was a short pause.

    “That silly pump. It’s too stiff for me. This place is like something out of the legends of Rthfrdia in the days of the old gods, and he’s a stupid kna-worm!” she shouted angrily.

    Old Lord U-Fl'aiir’th came in on this, saying testily: “What's all this shouting about, A’ailh’sa? They’ll hear you on the high reaches!”

    “Good morning, Lord,” said Roz politely, essaying a curtsey in her shirt and shawl.

    He gave her a hard look, and grunted. “What are you up to?” he said to A'ailh'sa.

    “We’re only trying to make a cup of fl’oouu tea, Lord U-Fl’aiir’th."

    “Galloping grpplybeasts, girl, light the fire!"

    She pouted. “I haven’t got a flint, I’m not a countrywoman from the Isle of Slrw.”

    Sighing, the old man produced an old-fashioned tinderbox from his jacket pocket, and adding a log and a little kindling to the ashes in the grate, lit the fire. “Get the pot, child,” he said tiredly, sinking heavily into the wing-chair.

    A’ailh’sa fluffed around uncertainly but managed to find the dried fl’oouu catkins for making the tea. She sat down in the rocker and Roz drew up a small stool beside her.

    “And who let you out, pray, Miss?” demanded the old man, frowning.

    Roz opened her mouth but A’ailh’sa said loudly: “I did! He thinks he’s smart but he isn’t, see! That lock’s as easy as anything! And so’s that silly thing on the cellar door! And I'm NOT going to stay in a horrid cold, draughty cellar!”

    “Was I locked in?” asked Roz after a moment's reflection.

    “Yes. Drouwh did it because of his silly plots.”

    “Be SILENT, A’ailh’sa!” thundered the old man.

    A’ailh’sa pouted. “She can read minds, so what does it matter?”

    “All right: what am I thinking?" the old man said to Roz.

    He was thinking a great many things, on a great many levels, but Roz replied readily: “That the Lady A’ailh’sa should be put over a knee and spanked hard, and that it would be safer for all of you if I were killed in a hunting accident, my Lord.”

    A’ailh’sa was gasping indignantly. The old man eyed her sardonically but said to Roz: “Very good. What else?”

    “That the prisoner is sending mind-messages. But you’re wrong, Lord, his mind is clouded.”

    Lord U-Fl’aiir’th replied grimly: “Is it, indeed? Then that’s the way it will stay until the Referendum.”

    “Um, she’s right, he hasn’t been trying to send actual messages,” ventured A’ailh’sa. “Just ‘Help,’ off and on.”

    “No doubt she’s been reading him, all the same,” he said in a hard voice.

    Roz shrugged. So?

    The Lady A’ailh’sa jumped, and clasped her head, and the old Lord winced a little.

    “Humblest pardons, Lord, I did not mean to broadcast,” said Roz limply. She had realised, too late, that it had given him considerable food for thought.

    “I'm sure you didn’t, my girl,” he said grimly. “Well, that’s interesting, given that there are relatively few humanoids who can both read minds from a distance of more than a couple of arm-measures, and send. And as far as I’m aware, Pleasure Girls, whether from Playfair Two or otherwise, do not form part of the select band who can.”

    “Who can, then, Lord U-Fl’aiir’th?” asked A’ailh’sa eagerly.

    The old man’s hard greenish eyes flickered over Roz’s face but his voice was quite amiable as he said: “Let me see. Commissioned officers in the Space Service, the Intergalactic Militia Corps, the Intergalactic Customs and Excise, and the Intergalactic Minerals Commission. Trainee Pilots and engineers. The Lords of Whtyll and their full kin—this is getting more and more unlikely, is it not? And all holders of Merchant Service Masters’ tickets. –Trader captains!” he explained irritably as A’ailh’sa looked blank. “Er... Oh, yes, Intergalactic medical personnel of the First Rank. Possibly our Pleasure Girl is a Full Surgeon?”

    “If I am, I don’t remember it, Lord,” she said politely.

    “But Roz can’t be any of those!” objected A’ailh’sa. “There must be some more!”

    “Many off-world races, but not very many humanoids. But you see, those are the professions for which the Intergalactic Militia Corps’ Intelligence Section recruits such persons.”

    “Beings,” said Roz automatically.

    “I stand corrected: beings, of course,” he said drily. “My choice would be an Intelligence Section officer, frankly—as I’m sure you’re aware, Pleasure Girl.”

    “Pooh, how could she be an officer? There’s some mistake, you’ve forgotten a category!” cried A’ailh’sa. “Or—or else she’s someone’s daughter. I mean, some of these Feddo Pilots and things must pass it on, surely!”

    “Yes. Their offspring tend to become Pilots, or engineers or Full Surgeons."

    “That isn’t FUNNY!” she cried.

    “I think it is, quite,” said Roz, grinning suddenly.

    “Well—well, you must be a—a renegade!”  she decided, pouting horribly.

    Roz choked. Even Lord U-Fl’aiir’th had to swallow.

    “Well, you must!” she cried.

    “All right, I’m a renegade Pilot. Ooh, no: a renegade full admiral!”

    “They’re all old MEN! And don’t LAUGH at me!” she shouted.

    Lord U-Fl’aiir’th got up stiffly with the aid of his silver knobbed stick. “Then pray do not make yourself ridiculous, A’ailh’sa. I think I shall retire for a while, we were very late last night. You may call me if there’s any trouble, but I don’t think there will be. And Mk-D’rm’d’s groom is on guard at the back.”

    “What about the front?” asked Roz automatically.

    The old man eyed her drily. “Mk-L’ster’s servo-mech is locked to the front door. I doubt if your powers, renegade Pilot or not, could shift it. When the hunters return, send my son to me, please.” He nodded, and limped out.

    “Old brute,” muttered A’ailh’sa.

    “I think he’s a very interesting old being. He's got a very strong mind indeed, he’s one of the few non-readers I’ve ever met who are capable of a mind-shield; had you—? Yes, of course you had,” she said to the girl’s red and scowling face.

    “You’re just as bad as me!” she protested angrily.

    Roz sighed. “I’m beginning to think I may be worse.”

    A’ailh’sa swallowed uncertainly. “Maybe Drouwh was right.”

    “Uh—about what?”

    “Taking klupf. He said it was dangerous and—and not fun—and all that kna shit!”

    Roz’s lips twitched. “I’m sure he did. I’m not familiar with your language, but do you think you ought to say it?”

    “Not famil— Oh! You’ve got a translator! It isn’t FAIR!”

    “You’ll be issued with a translator after Federation Day.” She paused. “Should you wish to go off-world. And should you have the requisite number of igs in your credit account to pay for it."

    A’ailh’sa ignored this. “Can I try it?” she asked eagerly.

    Her mind was even younger than— That of some small being whom Roz couldn't remember. Or was it two small beings? “No,” she said simply. “It’s IG-illegal.”

    “Pooh! –I tell you what: take it off and say something in your own language!"

    “I don’t know what that is, I seem to know many languages.”

    “Intergalactic, then! I did a bit at Second School, maybe I’ll remember it!”

    And maybe grqwaries would fly: the creature hadn’t even graduated from Second School! Rolling her eyes only slightly, Roz removed the translator. She sensed that she could have just overridden it, but there was no need for little Flppu-brain to know that.

    A’ailh’sa said something incomprehensible.

    Roz looked dry. “I can’t understand your language, Ladyship,” she said in Intergalactic.

    A’ailh’sa said something else incomprehensible, very excited, and added in halting Intergalactic: “You says you not understand me!”

    “Very good,” she drawled.

    A’ailh’sa beamed. “Says more,” she demanded.

    “Little Flppu-brain,” said Roz tiredly: “I could speak for an IG year and you still wouldn’t learn anything, your Flppu brain hasn’t got the capacity.” She replaced the translator. “This isn’t a kids’ toy,” she noted.

    Ignoring that, A’ailh’sa said: “That was something about Flppus, wasn't it? I wanted one for a pet, only Drouwh said there was a stupid Feddo regulation against it!"

    “While you’re outside the Federation, certainly.” Roz got up. “Once you’re in it, anything goes. –If my memory serves me aright.”

    “Then I’ll have one! A bright blue one!"

    “You’ll have to learn to control its bracelet. Not to say, keep it off the iirouelli’i juice."

    “What?” she said blankly.

    Roz went over to the passage door. “Given that it's too much to hope you’ll learn that Flppus are Class 390 sentient beings and have as much right to a free existence as you,” she added in a hard voice, and went out.

    After a stunned moment the Lady A’ailh’sa bellowed: “YOU'RE AS BAD AS BEASTLY DROUWH!"

    Roz went up to her room and sat in the hard chair by the window, discovering to her pleasure that it was a rocker like the one she’d sat in last night, and concentrated fiercely on remembering—remembering anything. But nothing would come.

    Sighing, she sat back, and began to listen instead.

    “We won’t wait lunch for Dh’aaych,” decided Drouwh, lips twitching slightly.

    “We could wait until the grpplybeasts come home, and he still wouldn't turn up, he’ll have snuck back to the lodge for a kip, the slacker!” said R’rt Fh’laiin with a laugh.

    The younger aristocrats who hung on The Black Mk-D’rm’d’s skirt laughed sycophantically.

    Drouwh grinned. “Aye, you’re right!” He began to build a fire for lunch. R’rt Fh'laiin pulled a skinning knife from his shin-sheath.

    “Lord Dh’aaych’llyai’n won’t get lost, will he, sir?” asked young Representative T'mmai’h Mk-Fr’w anxiously.

    “No: he knows these forests like the back of his hand,” replied The Mk-D’rm’d, throwing a lop-ear’s liver to his dog. He glanced up briefly and added, with the attractive, oddly wistful smile that lit up his narrow-jawed, rather sad face remarkably: “Not like some townees I could name!”

    The younger men all flushed and laughed weakly, and T’mmai'h Mk-Fr’w at this point realised with some relief that he wasn’t the only one present who wasn't familiar with all the ins and outs of hunting trips in the wilds of the clan country with R’rt Fh’laiin Mk-D’rm’d and Drouwh Mk-L’ster. He felt a lot happier and began mentally phrasing his account of the expedition for his wife. Who believed, naturally, that her T'mmai’h had received the flattering invitation to hunt at Lord Mk-L’ster’s lodge because he was an important Representative and a coming man.

    Drouwh’s mind picked up some of the pompous phrases and he smiled a little scornfully as he gutted a brace of ghrr: the fellow was a stuffed-shirt of a townee, and what old Lord U-Fl'aiir'th would undoubtedly stigmatise as a parvenu, if not worse. But to his astonishment, not unmixed with annoyance, he then discovered that his principal emotion was simple envy that the fellow had a loving wife to go home to! Silently he rolled the ghrr in clay and leaves and put them in the glowing coals of the fire.

     Inevitably the talk turned to politics while they waited for the meat to cook, the younger men waxing excited and indignant over the machinations of the conservative royalist clique at Court, and the fiery middle-aged D’nl’d Mk-H’aiy’h immediately concocting a score of bloodthirsty plans to circumvent the plotters once and for all…

    After a little R’rt Fh’laiin came and sat next to Drouwh under a large fl'oouu. “Do this lot make you feel old?” he murmured.

    “Yes. Especially D’nl’d Mk-H’aiy'h,” he replied drily.

    R’rt Fh’laiin laughed a little but said: “No, the younger ones. You realise that Mk-Fr’w’s only twenty-three?”

    “Nearly ten years younger than us. Were we that—?”

    “Impossible!” said R’rt Fh’laiin with a little laugh. After a minute he added: “Old gods, I’d just started Fourth School. And you— Was it that year your father died?"

    “No, that was the year before. Mother had been planning a huge party, and had to cancel it. Far more upsetting for her than getting rid of the Dad for good an’ all,” he said drily.

    “Oh, yes. It seems a megazillion years ago. Not that it made much difference to you, you’d been managing the estates since you left Second School.”

    “More or less, aye.”

    R’rt Fh’laiin sighed. “Yes. So... Two galaxies, it must have been the year you were seconded to the Household Staff, then!”

    “Yes. He thought he could make an aide of me, or some such,” said Drouwh grimly.

    “Ye-es... I’ve always wondered what went wrong, there, Drouwh.”

    Drouwh glanced at the others but they were still arguing heatedly. “I don’t mind telling you, old man, but it’s cursed boring. It was at the time that fool Bh’ay’llaaiyh was trying to enclose those tropical lands near Paradise City: you know, next to the cursed Royals’ mn-mn plantations!”

    “Um… yes. Never took much notice, I was off-world at the time. You fell out over that?”

    “Yes. He wanted to convene a full Lords’ Court and try the idiot with the full paraphernalia: cloaks, the skirt, the lot.”—R’rt Fh’laiin was goggling at him. “To show the rest of Bh’ay’llaaiyh’s ilk he meant business!” he said impatiently. “Make an example of him!”

    “Great galloping grpplybeasts, there hasn’t been a Lords’ Court for over two thousand years, and the last one was over an attempt on the Royal Person, not a—an entrepreneurial land thing!”

    “Quite,” agreed Drouwh drily. “And Bh’ay’llaaiyh’s a Kh’ain-Rh’uissh; the Kh’ain-Rh’uissh would have risen if it had come to a trial. He had a lot of influence with the clan back in the days before that weak fool Bhrs Kh’ain-Rh’uissh married Shn’aillaigh.”

    “So what happened, Drouwh?"

    Drouwh shrugged a little. “We had a series of flaming rows—mind-tussles and all, not pleasant—in the course of which we discovered that neither of us could dominate the other. Humiliating all round.”—Especially to the proud young man who had been the Drouwh Mk-L'ster of those days, thought R’rt Fh’laiin, not saying it.—“But eventually I got him to see that he’d have a bloody war on his hands if it did come to a trial: Bh’ay’llaaiyh had been supplying the Kh’ain-Rh’uissh with blasters in preparation for it for months. So he agreed to make it a civil affair, and the High Prosecutor entered an injunction against Bh’ay’llaaiyh in the Land Court. And that was that.”

    R’rt Fh’laiin frowned a little. “What was his precedent?”

    Drouwh was used to the clinical way in which his old friend's mind often worked, so he returned unemotionally: “The area had never been Bh’ay’llaaiyh or Kh’ain-Rh’uissh land: all that tropical territory's classed as Unclaimed. So it couldn’t be enclosed. If Bh’ay’llaaiyh wanted it he’d have to pay the Premium to the Treasury in the usual way."

    “I see.”

    “No, you don’t, old fellow,” replied Drouwh drily. “An attempt to enclose Unclaimed Land is an indictable offence under the Lords’ Circle Unclaimed Lands Proclamation of 5172 O.R. Rh’aiiy’hn would have been fully justified in bringing Bh’ay’llaaiyh to trial. And a guilty verdict would have entailed reversion of all Bh’ay’llaaiyh’s lands to his clanspeople.”

    “What?” he gasped.

    “It’s in the Register, read it if you’re that interested.”

    Ignoring this, R’rt Fh’laiin gasped: “And he still let you talk him out of it?”

    “Mm. He did go as far as the Preliminary Notification of Intention of Lords’ Court Trial, and at that point a band of Kh’ain-Rh’uissh went into the tropical territories and fired three villages. It was hushed up: you might not have heard about it, off-world.”—R’rt Fh’laiin shook his head numbly.—“Rh’aiiy’hn didn’t want any more bloodshed. He had the injunction brought within two hours of getting the news.”

    “I’d have thought it would have made him all the more determined to bring the bastard to trial!”

    “Don’t be an idiot, R’rt Fh’laiin, then the whole of the Kh’ain-Rh’uissh would have risen, it would have been merry mayhem.”

    “Yes,” he said, frowning. “But—well, if all of Bh’ay’llaaiyh’s lands could have gone to his clanspeople—!”

    “He conceded it was a case of the greater good."

    The Mk-D’rm’d thought it over. Drouwh watched him with a sardonic look round his long mouth. “In other words, Drouwh, he was in the right, both legally and morally, but you persuaded him to compromise.”

    He shrugged. “Yes.”

    “No wonder he hates you.”

    Drouwh replied tiredly: “He doesn’t hate me. He despises me because I urged him to ignore the law in the interests of peace, and he despises himself for giving in to me.”

    R’rt Fh’laiin’s rather cold grey eyes stared into the fire. After a while he said slowly: “It’s a great pity, Drouwh. All of this present business could have been avoided if the two of you had—had worked it out between you, back then.”

    “Possibly. But I’ll never see eye-to-eye with him on full devolution, and he’ll never consent to anything less.”

    R’rt Fh’laiin sighed a little, and said nothing.

    The prey sat in a little clearing. He’d built a fire, the kna-worm, and had roasted himself a lop-ear. –One of their lop-ears, so it was clear he deserved everything he was very shortly going to get. He was drinking from a flask: there was a smell of uissh on the air. Good, they'd have that, if the kna dropping left any.

    Dh’aaych’llyai’n looked up in surprise at hearing the shrill q’lw whistle so early in the year—the q’lws would scarcely have left the tropics yet on their long migration to the summer feeding grounds of the high reaches—and the three lassos whistled neatly over his head, pulling tight round his arms and waist. He had his knife in his hand as they tightened, and stood up, rather pale but steady.

    The ropes were jerked savagely and he realised they'd attacked him from three points of a triangle. Then the lowest one loosened and dropped, only to tighten round his ankles immediately. Dh’aaych’llyai’n stood in the centre of the clearing, pinioned.

    K’t-Ln stepped out cautiously from behind a fl’oouu, bow at the ready. She could see he had his knife in his hand, the kna-worm, he was faster than he looked.

    “The Mk-L’ster won’t let you get away with this, you know,” the man said mildly.

    “Shut up, kna-worm!”

    Dh’aaych stared. A girl? Surely not! He watched in surprise as two even slighter figures appeared from the trees. Galloping grpplybeasts, two of them were girls, all right! Dressed in rough foresters’ garments, but nonetheless girls. The third, a skinny little boy with bright ginger hair, looked both wildly excited and as if he might be sick at any moment. This wasn’t exactly a comfort: he’d been in enough tight spots to know that a terrified adversary was more likely to do you harm than a cool one.

    “Drop the knife, traitor’s bedfellow, or you’ll get an arrow in your arm!” snarled the leader.

    Dh’aaych didn't fancy an infected wound a day's drive by ground-car from civilisation, and they were all carrying bows, so he dropped it

    “Get it!” she snarled, and the little boy ran forward, grabbed the knife and, unprompted, Dh’aaych’llyai’n’s hunting bow, and ran back. “Xrillion!” he panted.

    “Shut up,” said the leader.

    “That’s the shortest bow I’ve ever been threatened with,” noted Dh’aaych conversationally. The second girl gave a horrified gasp, but the leader, predictably, only told him to shut up. “Er—I’m only carrying a few aylhs, but you’re more than welcome to them,” he said politely, rather glad he’d left his expensive off-world chrono-blob at the lodge. –And very glad he hadn’t had a dog with him, this girl would undoubtedly have shot the creature without a second thought.

    “Choke on your aylhs,” she said.

    “Yeah, choke on your aylhs!” agreed the little boy.

    “Shut up,” she said.

    Dh’aaych’llyai’n’s shoulders shook slightly.

    “You're our prisoner,” stated the leader, scowling terrifically.

    She was really very pretty under all that grime. Coppery hair like new-minted aylhs, like so many of the country people of Mk-L’ster. Or it would be if it was washed.

    “Yes, I can see that. Why?” he returned.

    The second girl began: “We’re going to—” but the leader shouted: “SHUT UP!”

    “But K’t-Ln, he’ll have to write—”

    “Be QUIET!” she shrieked.

    They were quiet, looking at her expectantly.

    “We’ll get him out of here, it’s too near the hunt,” she decided.

    “He’s heavy,” said the second girl, looking dubiously at Dh’aaych’s solid frame.

    “Yeah, we shoulda chosen a skinny one,” said the little boy. His cheeks were a lot pinker now and he was brimming with bravado.

    “Shut up. Gimme that spare rope.”

    The boy unwound a sizeable length of nyr-hide rope from his waist. The leader in person took it and tied it round Dh’aaych’s throat with a running knot. Was the little snr-cat going to hang him? Then she said, loosening the lassos from round his shoulders and ankles and stepping quickly back: “See that fl'oouu?”

    “Hard to miss it,” he murmured, though his cheeks had whitened.

    “Get up it. High as you can go. And DO IT, or I’ll let my brother prod your bum with his knife!”

    Dh’aaych’llyai’n experienced an odd sensation of relief that the child was her brother and not her son. “How old are you?” he asked curiously.

    “Old enough to have killed a man with this knife, kna shit! MOVE!” she shouted,

    “Ooh, K’t-Ln, you did not!” gasped the second girl.

    “Well, I would’ve, if that cursed Old Mother Mk-D’rm’d hadn't cured the kna-worm with her witch’s brew!” she retorted. “MOVE!” she shouted.

    Still wondering if he was to be hanged, Dh’aaych began to climb. The boy followed nimbly, knife drawn, urging him higher. And higher. What the—?

    Very high in the tree he said weakly: "Look, sonny, I don’t think I can go much higher.”

    “I can!” he said scornfully.

    “Yeah, well, so could I when I was your age and your weight. What are we doing in this tree, for the old gods’ sake?”

    “We’re gonna glide,” the child replied tersely.

    Well, ask a stupid question...

    K’t-Ln ascended the tree rapidly and hobbled his ankles.

    “Look, if it’s ransom you want, my father’s at the Mk-L’ster’s lodge: he’ll pay anything you ask.” –And burn you out of your forest after it, he thought on a sour note.

    “I heard that!” she said sharply.

    He felt his head cautiously. “Yes, I felt you hearing it. Are you—” He stopped, and did mental arithmetic. Up close, he could see she was very young: eighteen, at the most... By the old gods, she could be Drouwh’s daughter! Biologically speaking, that was. And after all, it wouldn’t be the first time a Lord had got up a daughter of the people the minute he was physically capable of it.

    “You’re a dirty-minded piece of kna shit!” she shouted angrily.

    “Don’t read him, then,” said the boy.

    “No, I won’t,” she decided. “Takes too much energy, anyway. I’ll need it for the blobs. Where's that idiot, M’ri? M’RI!” she bellowed.

    The other girl came up beside them, panting. “Here’s my cloak!”

    “Good.” The leader tied it round the now bewildered Dh’aaych’s neck. “Gimme yours,” she said to the boy. He handed it over and she slung it on top of the other. “Now, you an’ me are gonna glide,” she said in a grim voice to her captive. “When I say ‘Go,’ jump. If you don’t, we’ll both fall to our deaths. –Well, you will, I’ll let go.”

    “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

    “We’re gonna glide. These cloaks have got blobs in them. Can you use blobs?”

    “Uh—yes. I’ve got an off-world lifter.”

    “That pink one, eh?” gasped the boy excitedly.

    Dh’aaych blinked. “That’s right. It’s blob-driven.”

    “Automatic, though,” objected the boy.

    “Um—well, no, it isn’t, actually,” he said uncomfortably—though the old gods knew why he should be justifying himself to this scruffy trio! “I had it customized on Sfthnyxer. Uh—you wouldn’t have heard of it, but they’ll do practically anything at the Refit Shops there. Well, anyone can learn to use blobs, why should the cursed Feddos have all the fun?” he ended, very weakly indeed.

    “Yeah! It’s not fair, eh? Hey, has your lifter got a hyperdrive?”

    “SHUT UP, T’M!” shouted his big sister.

    “No. Even the Sfthnyxerians won’t do that for a non-Feddo,” he said glumly.

    “I said shut up! –And if you can drive a lifter, you can glide. Just think ‘Glide’ at the blobs in your cloaks, they'll do the rest.”

    Dh’aaych’llyai’n’s jaw fell. “By the— You don’t mean we’re going to fly?”

    “Glide. Yeah. When I shout ‘Go’, all right?” She took his hand in an iron grasp.

    “Don’t forget to jump,” said M’ri nervously.

    “Right you are. When you say ‘Go’ I jump and think ‘Glide’,” he croaked.

    “Yeah,” agreed K’t-Ln. “–Hey, this might work after all!” she said pleasedly to her siblings.

    “Yeah! He’s okay!” agreed little T’m, beaming.

    “He’s a kna-worm’s dropping, ya mean.” She took a deep breath.

    Dh’aaych closed his eyes and braced himself.

    “GO!”

    He jumped and thought madly Glide! at the blobs.

    After approximately two full minutes’ heart-stopping terror he became aware that the big leather cloaks were taught behind him and that the soft spring air was whispering past his cheeks. He opened his eyes cautiously.

    “Just maintain the thought. Like when you drive,” she said.

    Dh’aaych turned his head experimentally. “Yes,” he said faintly. Unexpectedly the girl smiled, and his heart lurched, not because of the fact they were at tree-top level.

    “You’re okay,” she said. “Haven’t filled your breeches, have ya?”

    “What? No!”

    “T’m did, first time he glided, little kna-worm,” she said unemotionally.

    “I see. Uh—not all of us males are kna-worms, you know.” He essayed a twinkle.

    But the girl’s brow darkened and she said shortly: “Enough of you are.”

    They glided on. After a little she said: “There’s a following breeze.”

    “Yes. –The forest is beautiful from this height.”

    “It’s beautiful anyway,” she said grimly.

    “Yes,” he agreed gently. He thought he knew more or less where they were, but he wouldn’t have sworn to it. He didn’t let on to the girl, it might have made things even more dangerous for him than they already were. At one point he saw the smoke of a cook-fire but said nothing: she must have seen it, too.

    Finally she said: “We’ll land on that next big fl’oouu. Don’t try to steer.”

    He did his best not to steer. She shouted: “Grab it!” as they neared the big tree, and he scrambled for hand- and foot-holds.

    “That’s the hardest bit!” she admitted, panting.

    “Aye!” Dh’aaych loosened the rope round his throat: she’d well-nigh strangled him during the landing. Or perhaps he’d done it to himself. “Where are we?”

    “Never mind.” She drew her knife and urged him down to the ground.

    “Couldn’t I have one hand free?” he said as she roped him to a tree.

    “Huh!”

    “Look, I’m sorry, Miss K’t-Ln, I know this sort of thing never happens in the old Stories, but I need to piss,” he said plaintively.

    “Kna-worm!” she snarled.

    “Even kna-worms do it,” he said sadly.

    Her lips tightened. She fumbled at his breeches-fastening with her grubby little hand. “Can you do it now?”

    “On my boots, yes.”

    “All RIGHT, I’ll hold it!” she shouted angrily.

    “Thank you.”

    She held it grimly, not looking. Dh’aaych’llyai’n had begun to wonder if he’d be able to, with the little hot hand on him, but he did, and said rather shakily, albeit with a laugh in his voice: “You’d better put it away, I think.”

    She stuffed the stiffening member into his breeches without remark, or any visible reaction, and he wondered how much she knew. But then, these country girls knew it all from the time they could toddle, and after all, a girl bandit, living rough—!

    When she’d fumbled the breeches closed he said grimly: “When do I get to meet the man who leads your merry band?”

    “Listen, kna-worm, I’m the leader round here!” she snarled, shoving her face into his, grey-green eyes aflame.

    “Oh,” he said weakly. “There’s just the three of you, then?”

    “So?”

    He’d been kidnapped by two girls and a snot-nosed brat, then. Dh’aaych bit his lip. “Why have you kidnapped me?”

    “You’ll see.” She turned away but added over her shoulder: “Can you write?”

    “Of course I can write!”

    “Good. I can write okay, and M’ri can write a bit, but people might recognise— And T'm’s hopeless.”

    “You’re going to make me write my own ransom note?” he said dazedly.

    “Yeah. I suppose that’s what they call them.” She began to climb a nearby tree.

    “Where are you going?” croaked Dh’aaych.

    “You don’t think I’m gonna let them walk here so’s The Lord’s dog can track us, do ya?” She vanished up the tree, carrying the two spare cloaks.

    Dh’aaych squinted but he didn’t see her take off. …No, on second thoughts he didn’t think she’d let the others lead a rescue party straight to them, she was far too intelligent for that. What a girl!

    Old gods, Father would have them burned out of the forest, he’d be furious. And when and if he was rescued he’d probably be even more furious with him, Dh’aaych’llyai’n, than he would be with his kidnappers. Ugh.