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spread about that you and I have quarreled, and I have left the partnership, Noran should not trouble you further.”
    Unmok stared at me in comical dismay.
    “You — you — if only we had that damned cage voller!”
    “You have all your equipment, the cages and the draught animals and the beast handlers. Froshak is a good man. You can start a fresh trip right away. Or,” I said, jocularly scathing at his funny ways, “you could take up the latest scheme you have to change your profession.”
    “Jak! You wound me!”
    “I intended to.”
    “Well, you won’t break the partnership like that.”
    “You are always talking about giving up the wild-beast business and going in for a new line. Or an old one. They are never the same two sennights running. Now is your chance.”
    He clamped down on a handful of palines, the rich juice spurting, and he glared at me in his funny Och way.
    I sighed.
    “Look, Unmok... It makes sense.”
    Suddenly he brightened. He swallowed. He jiggled with excited realization. “I have it! We spread the story of this quarrel and our parting. I take the cages back to the coast and there you join me and we sail off together! Capital! Capital!”
    The immediate thought that shot into my head was vile. I couldn’t do that to Unmok, could I? But, a little Och and a partnership, against the fate of empire? Could I?
    I stood up. Emperors have to make decisions all the time, right or wrong, it is part of the job. Given the importance in material terms of the two conflicting courses open to me, I knew I was choosing the right one. In almost any other terms I chose wrong.
    “A good idea, Unmok. I’ll draw Noran off. He ought not to molest you and you can get the caravan down to the river and hire craft to take us to the coast. I’ll meet you on the waterfront. And you mind you take care. Froshak—”
    “It is in my mind to hire guards now. The caravan will be empty, worth nothing, but a few hired swords will afford a comfort to a five-limbed Och.”
    “Yes. I won’t pick you up at Ingadot where you contract for the ship but at the mouth of the river. They always take on water last thing. It will be safer. And Unmok, watch out for the Forest of the Departed.”
    “I will. But it is caravans coming the other way that interest the bandits.”
    “And because of that, if you hire swords, keep them out of sight. They will make the bandits think you conceal wealth in what appears to be an empty caravan. Yes?”
    “You are a good partner, Jak.”
    “Unless,” I said, continuing the thought, “being a little five-limbed Och, you hire so many guards they would frighten a queen’s regiment of crossbowmen away.”
    He threw the paline dish at me, whereat I felt the enormity of my underhanded treatment of him, for, of course, I had no intention whatsoever of meeting him where the ships took on water.
    Unmok remained very cheerful as we said the remberees. We thought it prudent to begin the deception at once; thus, when we went down into the city we went separately. Froshak the Shine was apprised of the plan, and he said, in his usual way, nothing. I left the camp which had been moved away by the officials from the transit area. Once a caravan discharged its cargo it must make way for a new. We were a thousand paces or so up the road, sheltered in a nice little nook between fragrant clarsian bushes and the next nearest camp a good five hundred paces off. A stream ran paralleling the road here. I looked back as I crossed the rustic wooden bridge, looking at the row of cages, the tethered draught animals, seeing the huge, patient old quoffas with their wise enormous faces, seeing the thin stream of smoke from the campfire, and Froshak busily polishing up a krahnik harness brass. Well, I was saying good-bye to all that, and damned unhappy about the way of saying it.
    I nudged the urvivel between my knees and he clip-clopped on across the bridge. Unmok and I had decided not to buy expensive zorcas as