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not make the error of looking down
to see Korval's ring of rank for herself. Instead, she inclined her
head, with composure commendable in one of twice her years, and
looked to Daav.
    He likewise bowed, Guest to House Child, and
straightened without flourish.
    "Daav yos'Phelium Clan Korval."
    Kesa inclined her head once more and
completed the form.
    "Ma'am and sir, be welcome in our house."
She paused, perhaps a heartbeat too long, then bowed. "If you would
care to walk with me, I will bring you to my father."
    "Of your kindness," his mother murmured and
followed the child out of the welcoming parlor, Daav walking at the
rear, as befit one of lesser rank who was likewise his Delm's sole
protection in a House not their own.
    Kesa led them down a short, left-tending
hallway, through an open gateway of carved sweetstone and out into
an enclosed garden, and the full force of the evening gather.
    Etgora, Daav observed, as he followed his
mother and their guide down cunning, crowded walkways, was a Clan
which addressed its projects with energy. Challenged to display a
clean face to the world, it did not hesitate to bring the world
together immediately for the purpose.
    A more conservative Clan, Daav thought, his
quick, Scout-trained eyes catching glimpses of an astonishing
number of High Houselings among the crowd, would have invited
Korval, of course, to this first gather since its failure, and
perhaps one or two others of the High Houses, at most. Not so
Etgora, who seemed to have formed the guest list almost entirely
from the Fifty, with a few taken from the ranks of the higher
Mid-Level Houses, for the purpose, Daav supposed, of filling out
odd numbers.
    Progress along the pathways was slow, what
with so many acquaintances who must be acknowledged with a bow.
Both Daav and his mother several times had to duck under gay
strings of rainbow-colored streamers and the imported oddity of
Terran-made balloons.
    At long last, they achieved the center of
the garden, where a man slightly younger and a good deal less
elegant than his mother was speaking with apparent ease to no other
than Lady yo'Lanna. Daav owned himself impressed. Lady yo'Lanna was
his mother's oldest friend among her peers in the High Houses, and
he held her in quite as much awe now as he had at six.
    "Father," Kesa bent deeply, the full bow of
clanmember to Delm, and straightened self-consciously, shoulders
stiff beneath her finery.
    "Your pardon, good ma'am," the gentleman
murmured, and, receiving Lady yo'Lanna's half-bow of permission,
turned to face them.
    "Kesa, my child. Who have you brought
me?"
    "Father, here is Chi yos'Phelium, Korval,
and Daav yos'Phelium Clan Korval," the child said in the very
proper mode of Introduction. She turned and bowed, House-Child to
Guests. "Honoreds, here is my father, Hin Ber del'Fordan,
Etgora."
    So Kesa's father was Etgora Himself. It
explained much, Daav thought, from the unexpected youth of the door
guardian to her stiff determination to observe every mode
precisely.
    "Korval, you do me honor!" Etgora swept the
bow between equals--theoretically true, between Delms, Daav thought
wryly--and augmented it with the trader's hand-sign for "master," a
nice touch, drawing on the common trading background of both Houses
while publically acknowledging Korval's superiority.
    His mother, Daav saw, was inclined to be
amused by their host's little audacity. She bowed just short of
full Equal, accepting the master status Etgora acknowledged.
    "To be welcome in the house of an ally is
joy," she said clearly into the sudden nearby silence. She
straightened and extended a hand to touch Daav's sleeve.
    "One's son, Etgora."
    "Lord yos'Phelium." The bow this time was
Delm to Child of an Ally's House: High Mode, indeed, but carried
well, and necessitating, alas, the rather tricksy Child of a Delm
to an Ally as the most precise response. He straightened in time to
see his mother incline her head to Lady yo'Lanna.
    "Ilthiria, I find you well?"
    "As