“Isn’t magnificent, you mean? It certainly isn’t thoroughbred,” I took advantage of his polite reply to jabber on. “My bird is called Sheg; he’s loathsome.” I became more heated as I remembered how loathsome Sheg is. “He’s old, and mangy: with a very ill-temper—I can’t control him—he often frightens me. I’m sure he dislikes me and what could I do if he ever decides to run amock?—and once I saw him trampling a man.” “He must have been excited.”

“That’s not the point, it’s not an excuse—” I stopped as I felt my brows drawing down and realized my face must look ugly with annoyance. I quickly sweetened it again and blessed the tearstains on my cheeks. I glanced at him a second. I thought his eyes on me were intent. Hurriedly I sweetened my expression still further, pouting a little to explain my recent frown, and drew a deep breath which made the rents in the thin stuff over my breasts quiver interestingly. “What a heavenly smell the forest has acquired here,” I observed.

“It’s nothing but the usual smell of everything, including our men and beasts.”

“Uh?”

“Don’t be startled. I only mean that the snail smell has been left behind us, and everything it’s been covering is now normal again. No new wonderful scent has suddenly appeared.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t been noticing anything abnormal about the snail smell for some days past. I remembered how I had first seen the snails, and blushed.

He ran a finger down the parting of my hair.

“How much hair have you? It’s like a silk cloud.”

“It goes fluffy when I’ve just washed it.”

“I hope my wife will have such hair.”

“Wife? Do you feel you need a companion, my lord?”

He looked at me, then grinned. “Someone a little more rarely-bred than my present, official Companion, yes, possibly. Are you all right now, floss-hair? Slide down, unfortunately our meal is over and I had other things to attend to.”

I darted away from him, dismissed, my cheeks burning. “I attained nothing,” I thought. “Nothing but some absent-minded, rather insultingly-worded kindness.”

But this evening a man came to the Beauty’s tent with a young black thoroughbred bird. “With the compliments of His Mightiness,” he said. “I’ll call her to receive it,” I said. “No, it’s for you,” he said.

Before dusk, it began to rain.

Nevertheless, there was an inordinate amount of bustle in our part of the static camp and at every spare minute I ran to the flap to watch.