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shining.
    Pompino started up, bristling, but we sorted it out.
    Between some members of some races of diffs there does exist an immediate, top of the head, instinctive antipathy, varying in intensity from diff to diff, that has over the seasons become formularized and lacking any intensity of conviction. The slanging becomes mawkish or merry, not taken seriously, a peg to hang a mental hat on, a way of release from other tensions, a little banter to lighten up the day.
    In that spirit the Rapa Onron could say with a spit, “They should send you both to Execution Jikaida.
    That would make you skip about, believe me.”
    “I,” said Pompino, “have no wish to hear another word about Execution Jikaida. We don’t admit foul smells in here.”
    Before he could add the obvious and, perhaps, liken Onron to some particular stink, I butted in and got the details, as Pompino would have done after a little more enjoyable wrangling.
    As popular entertainment, the theatre lagged a long way after Jikaida in Jikaida City. But there were playgoers in the city who demanded and obtained the best plays, and tonight’s offering at Dottles Playhouse was to be given by a traveling company who had just come in with a caravan across the Desolate Waste. Pompino and I prepared for the evening, at the lady Yasuri’s instructions wearing brigandines under our lounging robes, and with thraxters belted to our waists — well, they went outside the robes, for no sensible Kregan willingly parts with his sword unless he knows that the company he will keep and the haunts he will frequent will prove friendly.
    The play was to be a great and famous old favorite of all those Kregans who love true theater and not the mindless singsong baubles dished up on the popular stage. We were to see Jögen , Part One, which comes from the fifth book of The Vicissitudes of Panadian the Ibreiver , the sublime cycle of plays by Nalgre ti Liancesmot. I was looking forward to it, and even Pompino, whose tastes were attuned more to the mass media — to use that oft-abused much later descriptive — gave his opinion that Jögen was always worth seeing and that he hoped this newly arrived company were of some quality.
    There was the obvious aphorism to quote him — from Panadian, to be sure, “The empty grave proves the armor’s worth.” To which, it is interesting to remember, a later playwright, En Prado, adds the rider:
    “The gallows dangle proves the armor’s faults.”
    There is debate over the latter, and as we went with the jostle of the crowd toward the theatre, Pompino was attempting to sway me to the school of thought which says that En Prado really wrote armorer’s faults and not armor’s faults. Either way, as we went in under the mineral-oil lamps’ flare to find the lady Yasuri, either way makes sense. It is a pretty point of a particularly fascinating and useless kind of academic lore.
    The fellow who tried to slip a dagger into my ribs so that he might more easily steal my purse was jabbed away with a fist in his mouth and then a boot in his guts. The crowd parted around him, and only two women squealed. Pompino wanted to put a knife between his ribs.
    “Leave him be, good Pompino. He but practices his trade — and poor pickings he will get tonight, with a broken tooth and a bruised mouth marking him for a brawler.”
    The would-be thief picked himself up. His clothes were neat as they must be for his trade here. “By Diproo the Nimble-fingered,” he spat out, spraying blood. “You are damned quick.”
    “Schtump!” shouted Pompino angrily. “Clear off!”
    He went away, then, as the theater’s hired guards stalked across to sort out the disturbance. I noticed the thief walked with a limp, and felt sorry for him, and then we pressed on into the lighted area where people waited and we saw the lady Yasuri.
    She saw us too, and her little body drew itself up. Her lined old nutcracker face had mellowed wonderfully of late; but her nose and her