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me. I sometimes think they humor me as they would a little child. Clearly they must have been thinking something along the lines that this so-puissant Dray Prescot, who was Prince of this and Kov of that and Strom of somewhere else, needed a little of the old headlong action to bring his addled senses back.
    Since when, it seemed to me their sly and good-humored smiles were saying, since when has the high and mighty and great Dray Prescot not been sure of anything? Ah! If they only knew! If they only knew of the torments of indecision I suffered then — and still do suffer, by Zair! — then they would revise their opinions drastically.
    I supposed they thought of me as a rough and ready soldier of fortune who had won through to great wealth and power — as indeed, with their help I had — and so therefore a man fit to be gently mocked. So I thought them. This amiable irony, this cheerful mockery of my comrades is returned by me, and it is never hurtful or cruel between us. Rather, it adds a zest to our comradeship, a spice, for each one of us knows that if he does a foolish thing — as who does not, by Vox! — the others will remind him of it, from time to time, gently.
    So, being a cunning old leem-hunter after my own fashion, I pointed at the two brothers in the pressing crowd halted by Seg’s single arrow standing in the floor as though held back by a solid wall of granite.
    “You two. Step forth.”
    They stepped out, apprehensively, and other men near them hurriedly drew away to give a clear path as though afraid of contamination or the plague. What the two trident-men thought, or what the people thought lay in store, Opaz alone knew.
    “You two. Brothers. Twins. Names?”
    They swallowed, alike as twins, alike as twins ought to be and so often are not.
    “Please, your honor, I am Tarbil the Brown.”
    “And, if it pleases your worship, I am Tarbil the Gray.”
    “It pleases me, Tarbils both,” I said. “I saw. And I heard. Why did you attend this meeting tonight?”
    Both spoke at once, then Tarbil the Gray yielded to Tarbil the Brown. “Our lives are poor, your honor. We thought there might be a little. . . fun.”
    “I would like to know why you did not shout for Chyyan with the rest.”
    “These people, your honor, would bring back slavery.”
    “Ah!” I said, understanding. I looked at the mob. “And that sweaty one whom you dragged back. He was your master?”
    “Aye, your honor. We were slaves from childhood until the High Kov said all slaves must go free.”
    He looked at me under his eyebrows, his head ducked, this stalwart, muscled, hardy fisherman. He would go out in his little dory all night with a light, spearing fish. He was whipcord tough. Now he swallowed and shuffled his feet and wet his lips. “And, your honor, you are really him? You really are, your honor, you really are the new High Kov, Dray Prescot?”
    “Yes.”
    I did not add, as I might unthinkingly have done once upon a time: “For my sins.”
    That was true enough, Zair knew. But they would have misunderstood, believing the words rather than the oblique thought behind them, an altogether too common failing, and a false word could have spread. I was hated enough in Veliadrin as it was.
    Both brothers began the full incline until I stopped them, somewhat roughly, with a word, and then bade them stand up like men.
    “There is no slavery in any place where the people look to me,” I told them, trying not to give the impression of smugness or of righteousness. That never wears with simple folk. “You who once were slave are now free. It is your right. And I would thank you for your help.”
    I did not, there and then, in view of some of the murderous looks bestowed on the Tarbil brothers, give them a gold piece each, or a ring or any other trifle. That would come later, when I confided the details to Panshi, my Great Chamberlain. He had remained at his post in the palace fortress of Esser Rarioch overlooking the bay and my