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around the knees.

    "Hold." A Terran would have smiled to show there was no threat. Liadens didn't smile, at least, not at Terrans, but this one exerted himself to incline his head an inch.

    "If you please," he said. "I must ask if you are certain that it was the Honored ven'Deelin's own card."

    "I—the name was plainly written, sir. I read it myself. And the sigil was the same, the very moon-and-rabbit you yourself wear."

    "I regret." The Liaden stood, bowed and beckoned, all in one fluid movement. "This falls beyond my area of authority. If you please, young sir, follow me." The blue eyes met his, as if the Liaden had somehow heard his dismay at being thus directed deeper into alien territory. "House courtesy, Jethri Gobelyn. You receive no danger here."

    Which made it plain enough, to Jethri's mind, that refusing to follow would be an insult. He swallowed, his breath going short on him, the Market suddenly seeming very far away.

    The yellow haired Liaden was waiting, his smooth, pretty face uncommunicative. Jethri bowed slightly and walked forward as calmly as trembling knees allowed. The Liaden led him down a short hallway, past two closed rooms, and bowed him across the threshold of the third, open.

    "Be at ease," the Liaden said from the threshold. "I will apprise the master trader of your errand." He hesitated, then extended a hand, palm up. "It is well, Jethri Gobelyn. The House is vigilant on your behalf." He was gone on that, the door sliding silently closed behind him.

    This room was smaller than the antechamber, though slightly bigger than the Market's common room, the shelves set at heights he had to believe handy for Liadens. Jethri stood for a couple minutes, eyes closed, doing cube roots in his head until his heartbeat slowed down and the panic had eased back to a vague feeling of sickness in his gut.

    Opening his eyes, he went over to the shelves on the right, half-trained eye running over the bric-a-brac, wondering if that was really a piece of Sofleg porcelain and, if so, what it was doing set naked out on a shelf, as if it were a common pottery bowl.

    The door whispered behind him, and he spun to face a Liaden woman dressed in dark trousers and a garnet colored shirt. Her hair was short and gray, her eyebrows straight and black. She stepped energetically into the center of the room as the door slid closed behind her, and bowed with precision, right palm flat against her chest.

    "Norn ven'Deelin," she stated in a clear, level voice. "Clan Ixin."

    Jethri felt the blood go to ice in his veins.

    Before him, Norn ven'Deelin straightened and slanted a bright black glance into his face. "You discover me a dismay," she observed, in heavily accented Terran. "Say why, do."

    He managed to breathe, managed to bow. "Honored Ma'am, I—I've just learned the depth of my own folly."

    "So young, yet made so wise!" She brought her hands together in a gentle clap, the amethyst ring on her right hand throwing light off its facets like purple lightning. "Speak on, young Jethri. I would drink of your wisdom."

    He bit his lip. "Ma'am, the—person—I came here to find—told me Norn ven'Deelin was—was male."

    "Ah. But Liaden names are difficult, I am learning, for those of Terran Code. Possible it is that your friend achieved honest error, occasioned by null-acquaintance with myself."

    "I'm certain that's the case, Honored," Jethri said carefully, trying to feel his way toward a path that would win him free, with no insult to the trader, and extricate Sirge Milton from a junior's hopeless muddle.

    "I—my friend—did know the person I mistakenly believed yourself to be well enough to have lent money on a portweek investment. The—error—is all my own. Likely there is another Norn ven'Deelin in Port, and I foolishly—"

    A tiny hand rose, palm out, to stop him. "Be assured, Jethri Gobelyn. Of Norn ven'Deelin there is one. This one."

    He had, Jethri thought, been afraid of that. Hastily, he tried to