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curled close, as if the zorsal wanted a hiding place and was making do with the best she could find.
    He who had brought them here swept aside a curtain to wave Simsa in. She chose a seat placing her back to the wall from which most of the room was in view. Involuntarily, she flexed her claws a little, projecting their needle tips from her finger sheaths.
    To the crop-headed boy in the stained shirt who lounged over to serve them she quickly gave her own order—making sure that she would not be fuddle-headed by any potion as strong as the traders used to bewilder those they would entangle in some ploy to bring themselves a double return. If starmen followed such practices, she would be prepared.
    This stranger might appear open-faced, even eager, but a man could wear many masks and never show what lay beneath them. What still astonished her the most was that Gathar had spoken of her and that, in turn, this one had recognized her from the waremaster’s description. Unless, of course, it was because of Zass. She smoothed the head fur of the zorsal now. Only, this man had looked upon her down by the ramp when the zorsal had been hidden nearly from view. So—she waited for him to speak, knowing that thus a small advantage was hers.
    He opened a large bag which had swung from his shoulder and which now rested on the stained table between them. From it he took with the same caution that one would use to handle leaf gold, two of the fragments she had traded to Gathar earlier that day. Seeing the care with which he touched those now, Simsa could have snarled in frustration. It was certain that Gathar had made an excellent bargain, far beyond what she had or could hope to gain herself. Under the table, she felt again for the two things in her sleeve pocket and her hopes stirred higher. If such fragments were what this one sought, she perhaps could drive her own price well higher than she had first planned.
    “These—” the starman had laid his hand flat upon the larger of the two, “where were these found?”
    He believed in coming directly to the point. Simsa felt a growing contempt triggered by this display of eagerness. Now she could believe that Gathar must have nicked him well if he had displayed the same eagerness to that trader old in well-learned craftiness.
    “If you know Kuxortal,” she answered, speaking slowly and with care, using the accent of the upper town, “you would also know that such as these,” a flick of the finger pointed to what his hand near covered, “are apt to be found anywhere. Though—” (should she pretend that such “treasures” were hard come by and that she alone held the secret? No, better not chance that; she had no idea what Gathar had told him already. Those she had sold were not the easily found gleanings of any dump, they were the result of seasons of delving first on Ferwar’s part and then by Simsa herself.)
    “You say anywhere—” he spoke slowly as she did, as one feeling his way through an alien tongue. “I do not think that is true. I have already spoken to Guild Lord Arfellen—” He was watching her narrow-eyed now, and Simsa sat very still, holding his stare with her own eyes, determined not to let him see that he made any impression on her, if he had meant that as an implied threat. He could, with fewer words that he had just mouthed, have her up into the question room of a guild and that was something to shake anyone’s mind with fear.
    Zass quivered until the girl could feel the shaking of the small body so closely pressed against her. The zorsal was always, she had discovered long ago, well able to pick up her emotions, translate them in turn into a reaction of the creature’s own. The girl stroked the leather wings covering the upper part of the back, unable to see how she would twist and turn to answer with anything but the truth.
    “Those I did not find—not all of them.” Truth had a bitter taste when it was forced out of one and she seldom had used it