I had not laid eyes on her for fifty or sixty days, and on the last occasion I had glimpsed her, it was from a distance. She was walking to and fro on a high gallery in her yellow gown, but becoming aware of me, she had quickened her step and gone away.

Today she wore a black fur hood, and though her face was silver still, her dress was fringed with gold and her velvet sleeves ringed with it. However, she was not with Erran but with a stocky golden bear. He fondled her wrist in its velvet gauntlet, but she was staring straight at me.

Erran called a second time, my name, or the name I had been given here.

“Vazkor.”

I went to him, more leisurely than the equerry. I put my hand on his horse’s neck; it knew me, I had had a part of its training a month before.

“My lord.”

A few of the ladies murmured that I had not bowed to him (I never did), and I heard some man say, “This is the proud tribal dog of the mixed blood.”

“I have been telling Blue-Sleeve,” Erran said, “that we should like his best riders to put the horses through their paces for us. He has recommended you, Vazkor, above all the rest. There is none to match you, he says.”

“Ah, yes, my lord,” I said, “that is no doubt because of my tribal pride and my mixed blood.”

The man whose sentence I had borrowed swore. I nodded to him politely and went away to do my tricks for Erran’s brainless court.

There were three others picked beside me. It was the equerry’s compliment to us, rather than an effort to please Erran. Still, it rankled, and for the thousandth time I must recite to myself the old spell: Act his dog, for you are not his dog; it is worth the play for the bone. I had not yet learned the lesson that when you are forever telling yourself that such and such is worth the price, then the price is too high and has been paid too often.

The grooms led the animals over. We mounted up and had them do the usual things that show a horse’s mettle, and please any gentlemen and ladies who happen to be watching: standing jumps, and jumping over obstacles of various heights, and a mock fight, horse with horse and rider with rider. This bout, having been chosen for it, I won. I was not sorry to knock my opponent out of his saddle; he was an imbecile I had had dealings with before.

Presently, when it was all done and we were walking the horses to cool them, three golds came up to me with their silver women, and one of these princes was the bear who escorted Demizdor. Partly I had forgotten her in the hard exercise, and that she had changed hands.

The golden bear put his palm on my elbow and another finger under my chin to halt me, for all the world as if I were some serving girl he fancied. I stopped and looked at him, and felt stupidly like a boy who had been touched up by one of his father’s guests and must keep quiet about it when he would prefer to answer with his fist.