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so.”
    “Oh?”
    “Avec is a good friend as well as a banker. He was approached to contribute financial assistance and refused, having a regard for his own head and no liking for the idea of walking out over the silver sand. He is safe, he assures me, for he holds papers against Noran and Dorval and others of that ilk. He knew I had done business with Noran and so he warned me in friendship. I agree the conspirators are foolish. I do not think that news is general knowledge.”
    “For your sake, I hope not—”
    “My sake, Jak! Have I not just explained—?”
    “Noran strikes me as a weak man who vents his pettiness in vicious attacks against those weaker than himself. If Avec dies, the papers may burn.”
    “Not Avec Parlin. He is too shrewd for that.” But I could see the notion did not please Unmok. He twitched his middle left stump and threw his plate at the slaves with his middle right, at the same time picking his teeth with his upper right. His upper left brushed worriedly over his forehead where the lines stood deeply incised.
    “Slit his throat,” said Froshak the Shine.
    This Froshak had been about to be put to the question, up at Vad Noran’s villa, when the schrepims escaped. I’d thrown him my knife and helped him escape, and in the subsequent action he had been exculpated of the crime of freeing the schrepims. I viewed him with favor, for we had fought shoulder-to-shoulder, and I think — I hope — that he bore me a certain fellow-feeling.
    Where your normal camp boss might have stood up and said something like, “Well, time to be up and doing,” Froshak the Shine just stood up and got on with it. The cages stood about, empty. Our mercenary guards had been discharged and the few tame slaves, who had been with Unmok some time, had little to do. The institution of slavery is abhorrent to me, but in this instance of Unmok and his tame slaves, a relationship had developed that, while still unpleasant, is perhaps less of a blot on humanity than slavery as a whole. Certainly, this kind of valued family-retainer kind of slavery is often trumpeted in extenuation of the whole vile business. As far as my friends and I in Vallia were concerned, it wouldn’t wash. Slavery was going to be eradicated.”
    And there spoke the great idealist with stars in his eyes and blood on his hands and mud on his boots, by Vox!
    A pottery dish of palines afforded Unmok the chance to remain seated, looking at me. He popped a paline into his mouth and chewed. I followed his example, savoring the taste. Chewing, he said, “I spent some time thinking over what passed when we first went to see Noran and sold him the thomplods. I think he believes you are employed in some secret capacity by Queen Fahia.”
    “I gave him that impression. It helped the bargaining.”
    “It did that all right. But Jak, if he is plotting against the queen then he will regard you even more as an enemy to be put down.”
    “You could have the right of it, Unmok! It could be that is why he sent those assassins, and not to silence our mouths about his vain claim to the Jikai!”
    Solemnly, Unmok chewed and nodded.
    “Then until this matter is settled, you and I must part company. He has no quarrel with you.”
    “If you think, you hairy apim, that I will—”
    “I know. I had promised to introduce you to my friends this afternoon. But now, I think...”
    Saying good-bye to Tyfar and Jaezila had been pushed from my head by what they had said. Huringa seethed with plots and moils, and now Unmok was telling me of another. If fat Queen Fahia could be brought down and I could play a part in that, then this was where I belonged. Vallia was in good hands, as I kept on telling myself, fretting that I was not there. Tyfar was expecting news this day, and from what he said the news might give us the chance to join in a plot that was, so Tyfar said, the most promising. The future filled with visions. There was much to be done here. But—
    “If word is