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now. I can do all the work of the shop, completely. Those girls obey. What you will tell her, maybe it takes her mind from the work. But you should know, it will be no harm to anything."
    "You're a nice person, Shaj."
    She smiled, perhaps blushed slightly. "Thank you."
    I leaned back into heavier shadow and sipped the beer. The light came down over her shoulder, backlighting the odd pale hair, shining on the curve of her broad cheek. This one had the same thing Nora had, such a total awareness of herself as a woman, such a directed pride in being a desirable woman, that every small fastidiousness was almost ritualistic, from stone clean scalp to glossy pedicure, all so scented and cared for that, as is the case with the more celebrated beauties, the grooming itself forms a small barrier against boldness, against unwelcome intrusion.
    Around us was the night silence ticking toward three in the morning. In a nearby bed slept the drugged woman, unaware for a little time of the depth of her wound. In that silence, which seemed more difficult to break with every passing moment, I felt the slow increments of awareness. That sort of awareness is an atavistic thing, a man-woman thing on a wordless level, and when it occurs in just that way, you know that she, in the cat-foot depths of the female heart, is just as aware of it as you are.
    She lifted the glass to her lips, and I saw the silken strength of the pale throat work as she swallowed.
    "What made the princess turn to ice?" My voice sounded too loud.
    She stared across at me. At last she said, "Breakink a sacred vow."
    "Was she forgiven?"
    "Not at all. Her heart turns to ice. Her tears turns to ice. And where she is, on a high mountain, it then begins to snow, and forever, even in summertimes, the mountain there is white."
    "It seems like a sad name to give a little girl."
    "It is not my name."
    "No?"
    "My name is Janna."
    "Where did you get Shaja then?"
    "My hoosband call me that as a love name, because to him, in the beginning, I was of ice. But then not."

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    "Why do you call yourself that now?"
    She came to her feet with a slow lithe grace. "Perhaps for rememberink at all times such a sacred vow. A vow to a man who throws at tanks little bottles of fire. Perhaps you should go and sleep a little, and come back here at almost nine when I must leave, because if she is not awaken then, she can sleep more and you can be here to tell her all those thinks, no?"
    I agreed. No princess could have dismissed a peasant with a more gracious hauteur. She walked me to the door, turning on the hallway light.
    "What was his work, Janna?"
    "Please. You must not say that name for me. Not ever."
    "What did he do for a living, Shaja?"
    She shrugged. "A teacher of history. A man not quite as tall as me. A mild man, getting bald on his head in the middle. Just one year married. It was necessary, what he did. But then all of the world turned its back on our land. As you know. That is the shame of the world. Not his shame.
    Not mine. I came out because I was no use there. Not to help him there." She put her hand out.
    "Goodnight," she said. "Thank you."
    It was the abrupt continental handshake, accompanied by a small bow, an immediate release of the clasp. As I walked to my car I looked back and saw her still standing there in the open door silhouetted against the hallway lights, hips canted in the way a model stands. We both knew of the hidden smoldering awareness. But there would be no breakink of vows, not with that one. It made her that much more valuable. Dobrak, the history teacher, bald on his head in the middle, mild slayer of tanks, had his hand on her loyal heart at all times. And she would wait out her years for him, unused and prideful.
    As I drove back to Bahia Mar I wanted to hold fast to all the small speculations about her, the forlorn erotic fancies, because I knew that as she slipped out of my mind, Sam Taggart would take her place.
    And he did, before I was home. I found a