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the wagon.
    Immediately, kneeling, she lowered her head to the gravel, in obeisance.
    I then turned away, and began to ascend the bridge, leading up to the gate. I
    put the girl from my mind. She was, after all, a slave, and her use had been
    paid for.
    2       The Court; Chained Women
    (pg.31) “You are not a female,” said the voice from behind the door, a small,
    narrow door cut in the left panel of the gate, the eyes peering out from a small
    sliding hatch in the door. “Show that you have money!”
    I lifted up a copper tarsk. The fellow inside lifted up a small tharlarion-oil
    lamp to the opening. I held the coin where he could see it but I did not put it
    through the aperture.
    “Not enough!” he said.
    I then held up a silver tarsk. The door opened.
    I entered.
    He locked the door behind me.
    I then followed him through a high, shedlike tunnel, walled with wood, about
    forty feet long, to the interior gate. There he turned about. “Something for the
    porter,” I said.
    “You are paid by the keeper of the house,” I said.
    “Times are hard,” he said. “And it is late. I have opened the door late.”
    “That is true,” I said. I put a tarsk bit into his hand.
    “Times are hard,” he said.
    I put down my pack. I took out a knife and pushed it a bit into his gut, pushing
    him back against the inner gate. He turned white. I lifted up his purse, on its
    strings, and, with the point of the knife, opened it. There were several coins
    within it. I could see in light of the small lamp he carried. (pg.32)”Times are
    not as hard as you thought,” I said. “How much would you like?”
    “A tarsk bit is quite sufficient,” he said.
    “You have it,” I said.
    “Yes, Sir,” he said. “Thank you, Sir.” He put the tarsk bit from his hand into
    his purse, as I held it, and then took the purse gingerly from me, and, sensing
    he was permitted, dropped it, on its strings, so that again it hung from his
    belt, on his left. If one is right-handed, one normally lifts the purse with the
    left hand and reaches into it with the right. The weight of the purse, on its
    drawstrings, closed it.
    “It is a violent night out,” I said.
    “It is, Sir,” said he. “What have you heard from the north?”
    “I have come from the south,” I said.
    “Few go north now,” he said.
    “Most here, I gather,” I said, “are from the north.”
    “Yes,” said he, “and we are crowded beyond belief.”
    “With folks from Ar’s Station?” I asked.
    “Not many now,” he said. “Some managed to flee.”
    “Most are trapped in the city?” I said.
    “Apparently,” he said.
    “What is your latest intelligence?” I asked.
    “Little that is new,” he said.
    “And what is old?” I asked.
    “From whence have you come?” he asked.
    “From the south,” I said. That I had come from Ar herself was no business to
    this fellow.
    “Only what I hear,” he said, “—that the Cosians have invested Ar’s Station, on
    three sides by land, and have closed the harbor, that with a wall of chained
    rafts.”
    “Have the walls been breached?” I asked.
    “Several times,” said he, “but each time the defenders have managed to hold the
    breach, and repair the wall.”
    I nodded. Some terribly bitter fighting takes place at such times. So, too, it
    can, in the streets themselves. “Cosians, as far as you know,” I said, “hold no
    part of the city itself.”
    “Not as far as I know,” he said.
    “What are the numbers involved, and your speculations as to the outcome?”
    (pg.33)”It is you who wear the scarlet,” he said. “I am only a poor porter.”
    “Surely you have heard things,” I said. I sheathed my knife. I sensed it might
    be making the fellow nervous.
    “I have heard there are thousands of Cosians, their auxiliaries, and their
    mercenaries, at Ar’s Station,” he said. “Of that is true, they must outnumber
    the regulars in Ar’s Station by as many as ten to one.”
    “Equipment,