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carefully threw it into the middle of the other guy's stomach. He grunted and cried out and swung in my direction, coming close enough to my wrist to take some hair off my arm. But that was all he had in him. He dropped his sword and knelt on the street, bent over, holding his stomach.
    I said, "Okay, get going." I did my best to sound as if I weren't breathing hard.
    They looked at each other, then the one with my knife in his stomach teleported out. When he was completely gone, Bajinok stood up and began limping away, holding his injured shoulder. I changed my mind about going straight home. Loiosh continued watching Bajinok as I turned up the street.
    "I'd just take it as a warning," said Kragar.
    "I don't need you for the obvious stuff."
    "I could argue that," he said. "But never mind. The Question is, how hard is he going to push it?"
    "That," I said, "is the kind of stuff I need you for."
    "I don't know," he said, "but I assume we're going to get ready for the worst."
    I nodded.
    "Hey, boss."
    "Yeah?"
    "Are you going to tell Cawti about this?"
    "Huh? Of course I'm going to… oh. I see what you mean. When things start to get complicated, they don't go halfway, do they?" Kragar seemed to have left the room by then, so I took out a dagger and threw it as hard as I could into the wall—the one without a target on it. The gash it left there wasn't the first, but it may have been the deepest.
    When I went home a few hours later I still hadn't decided, but Cawti wasn't there. I sat down to wait for her. I was careful not to drink too much. I relaxed in my favorite chair, a big, overstuffed gray thing with a prickly surface that makes me avoid it when I'm unclothed. I spent quite a while relaxing before I began to wonder where Cawti was. I closed my eyes and concentrated for a moment.
    "Yes?"
    "Hi. Where are you?"
    She paused, and I was suddenly alert. "Why?" she said finally.
    "Why? Because I want to know. What do you mean, why?"
    "I'm in South Adrilankha."
    "Are you in any danger?"
    "No more than an Easterner is always in danger living in this society." I bit back a response of spare me and said, "All right. When will you be home?"
    "Why?" she asked and all sorts of prickly things started buzzing around inside of me. I almost said, "I was almost killed today," but it would have been neither true nor fair. So I said "Never mind" and severed the link.
    I stood up and went into the kitchen, I drew a pot of water and set it on the stove, threw a couple of logs into the stove itself. I stacked up the dishes, which Loiosh and Rocza had already licked clean, and wiped off the table, throwing the crumbs into the stove. I got the broom out and swept the kitchen, threw the refuse from the floor after the crumbs from the table. Then I took the water off the stove and washed the dishes. I used sorcery to dry them because I've always hated drying. When I opened the cupboard to put them away I noticed that it was getting a bit dusty so I took everything out and went over all the shelves with a cloth. I felt the faint stirrings of psionic contact then, but it wasn't Cawti so I ignored it and presently it went away.
    I cleaned up the floor below the sink, then mopped the whole floor. I went into the living room, decided I didn't feel like dusting and sat down on the couch. After a couple of minutes I got up, found the brush, and dusted off the shelves next to the door, under the polished wooden dog and the stand with the miniature portrait of Cawti on it, and the carved lyorn that looked like jade but wasn't, and the slightly larger stand with the portrait of my grandfather. I didn't stop and talk to Cawti's portrait.
    Then I got a rag from the kitchen and wiped down the tea table that she'd given me last year. I sat down on the couch again.
    I noticed that the lyorn's horn was pointing toward Cawti. When she's upset, she can pick the strangest things to think are deliberate, so I got up and turned it, then sat down again. Then I got up and