“By the yellow whore”—Erran jerked his thumb at the headless giant-woman—“I will give you one. And it is too much.”

“Two at least I will have,” Kortis said calmly.

Nemarl turned away, as if disgusted by their wrangling like tribal wives over a bronze pot. To this the lords of the cities had been reduced. I leaned on the pillar, my ears buzzing and my blood soaking in the fine tunic they had given me, listening as they haggled away their honor and my life.

Presently the chaffering stopped. They had agreed my worth and I had not listened to it.

They were mounting up, not bothering to take me with them, talking, as they did it, of some ceremony of justice here tomorrow, when they had seen how Zrenn’s carving had progressed, how much of Vazkor there might be in me. Erran rode back to me.

I looked with my single eye at him, the other sealed fast.

“You speak the city tongue,” he said, “so the old Phoenix tells me. Speak then.”

I said, slowly, in order I should get it right, “May you eat dung and pass blood, and may the ravens squabble for your liver.”

“You will regret your good wishes, tomorrow,” he answered pleasantly, and spurred his horse away.

It appeared I was to be excellently guarded. About the open forum some twenty of Kortis’ bronze soldiers were lingering, and the dark slave-men building fires and raising awnings for them against the chill, in the angles of the ruined walls. Three silver captains of Kortis’ band were dicing near the statue in a shelter already prepared, and well heated by a brazier. It seemed no golden-masks—commanders or kin—were left to Kortis Phoenix since his men fell on their swords in the pavilion on the fortress rock. Maybe he had special cause to hate me for that.

The sun’s brilliance was already darkening, seeping away into a twilight afternoon, taking my perceptions with it. Blue clouds bulged in the western sky. The wind passed like a comb along the streets of the city.

Perhaps I could die in the night, if it obliged me by growing cold enough.

The rats in my cell would be sorry I had not been returned to them. I could feel their teeth gnawing, even so, in the slashes on my chest and belly and the great chasm in my face, the rat teeth of pain.

Kotta, the blind woman, had called me handsome.

It would take a blind woman to think me handsome now.

4

I woke suddenly, hanging in my bonds like a carcass, and felt the strangeness that was in the night, or in me.

It was cold, but not bitter, the sky above the open Temple roof more white than black with all its stars and the low hunter’s bow of the moon. The shades and lights lay straight across the paved floor in stripes, with only the few dull gems of the dying fires to break them. Not a sound in the world, even the wind sleeping. The soldiers were sleeping, too, or mesmerized at their watch-posts, if any had been set.