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us.
    “Don’t you worry about this Captain business, either,” she said. “It will work out to whatever is right for you.”
    “Milda, you … I’ll miss you a lot.”
    “And we’ll miss you, Rikardon. Shall I tell Thanasset about Worfit?”
    “I guess you’d better, but please ask him not to take any action on his own. I’ll leave quietly, tomorrow morning. Worfit will know I’ve gone. He might even think he’s scared me off, and that will be enough for him.”
    “You won’t leave without saying goodbye to Thanasset, will you?” she asked. “He would be very sad.”
    “Of course not. I promised to talk over the Supervisor’s job with him before the Council meeting tomorrow. I’ll have to do that in the morning, so that he can take my answer to the Council for me.
    “Tonight … there’s someone else I have to say goodbye to.”

4
    I had taken a quick bath and dressed with care in a suit I had admired on my first day in Raithskar. It was a thigh-length yellow tunic and a green, sleeveless surcoat embroidered in a matching yellow. Such color coordination was the mark of evening dress, since ordinary clothing was a jumble of bright colors. With brass-studded sandals and a heavy chain belt, I accepted Markasset’s judgment that I was very well dressed. It didn’t hurt my ego any when I passed a lady and drew a second look.
    Illia’s house was located northwest of the Square, halfway across the city from Thanasset’s home. It was a modest house, with a smaller yard and grounds than Thanasset’s had. But it, too, opened directly from the street with two doors, one into the house and one into the garden. Its midhall—a long, central room which divided the house—had walls faced with smooth plaster, spotlessly white. In this house, the sitting room to the right of the entrance door was not closed off with a wall, but formed an extension of the midhall. When Illia’s mother answered the door, she led me into that parlor and we sat there for a while, exchanging slightly awkward small talk.
    Her father, a big man with a lopsided grin, came home while I waited there. He worked for the city as a gardener; he said a quick hello, then excused himself to go and get cleaned up. Just after he left, Illia appeared on the stairs which faced the parlor.
    Before I had touched Serkajon’s sword, I had been plagued with a sort of double vision, especially regarding the Gandalaran people. To Ricardo, they had been ape-like creatures with prominent supraorbital ridges, slightly pug noses, and outsized canine teeth that resembled tusks. To Markasset, they had looked quite ordinary, like people I had grown up with and known all my life.
    Regarding Illia specifically, Markasset remembered her as inordinately pretty, but he had found more value in her unquestioning trust in him than in her looks. In Thanasset’s garden on the day I first came to Raithskar, Ricardo had recognized Illia’s beauty while accepting its alienness.
    It was
Rikardon
who looked at her now. The alienness was gone. She was so beautiful that I stood up and stared, speechless, as she came down the stairs.
    Her head fur was a dark gold. It shone in the lamplight, looking so soft that I wanted to touch it. Her face was small and delicate, her mouth a gentle curve.
    She was wearing a long, sleeveless shift of lightweight linen in a soft shade of green. Glass beads in a darker green decorated the low neckline and the belt which pulled the soft folds of the gown snug to her waist. The skirt was slit up the left side, almost to her hip, to allow walking freedom. There was a single fine chain of gold around her neck.
    Somehow, I said goodbye to her mother, for I suddenly found myself outside, walking beside Illia in the direction of the restaurant district. There was a tense silence that I didn’t like, and didn’t quite know how to break.
    “I thought we’d eat at the Moonrise,” I suggested finally. It was a restaurant that Markasset’s memory