treaty. Only it isn’t you they’ll start into, it’s me.”
They were walking at their regular pace. Paula fell behind them. She broke into a run to keep up.
Ahead, along the side of the street, a line of people was forming. The head of the line disappeared around the next corner to the left. Saba led her alongside it. The waiting line thickened. On the far side of the street was another, all in white: slaves. The lines led up the steps of a round building with a dome roof. Bright paper banners hung from the eaves. Saba took her around the head of the line of Styths to a side door.
“The rAkellaron get in free,” he said. They went into a lobby. “A privilege we pay for by making up the house deficit.” A fat man rushed across the lobby toward them.
“Yes, Akellar—it’s been quite some time since we had the honor of entertaining you.” He ushered them up the flight of stairs, breathless with compliments. The carpet over the steps was worn. The hallway at the top of the stairs was dark. Drapery cushioned the walls. The fat man waddled ahead of them to pull back a section of the hanging.
Saba’s hand on her back pushed her through the gap. She went into a little balcony. Tanuojin sat in one of the four chairs, his back to the curtain. Paula went by him to the rail of the balcony. One story down, the open theater was filling with people. She stood on her toes to see over the railing to the round stage. The lights above it came on. Saba lifted her up from behind like a child and put her down in a chair so deep she felt swallowed.
“Can you see?” He sat down on her left; she was between him and Tanuojin.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Are you warm enough?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you fuss over her?” Tanuojin said, in his deep musical voice.
“She’s making me rich,” Saba said.
“Did you tell her how? Look over there. Machou is here, and Ymma is with him.”
Saba’s head turned, his eyes aimed across the theater at the balcony directly opposite them. Three or four people were milling around in the little space. Saba stood up. On Paula’s right, Tanuojin swore and slouched down and put his feet up on the rail. In the far box, a big man sat, and Saba took his seat.
“You’ve got slave manners,” he said to Tanuojin.
“I stand up for him in the pit. That’s all he’s worth.”
Saba put his elbows on the arms of his chair, his hands on his belt. “Neither of you has any breeding.”
“You are all virtue. Tell her how she’s going to make you rich.” Tanuojin’s hand struck the side of her head so hard she was dazed a moment, blinking and stupid. He said, “If any of the rAkellaron want off-world markets arranged, we have to do it through you, don’t we?”
“Don’t hit me,” she said, through her teeth.
“He’s charging us each ten per cent of our advances for the use of what I suppose you call your mind.”
Unsurprised, she gave Saba an oblique look. What Ymma had said about his strange tastes came back to her. In Styth he was probably a dangerous radical. He nodded over the rail.
“Watch.”
The Akopra began. She could make no sense of it. Four men, wearing huge painted masks, moved in stylistic gymnastic poses around the bare stage. The performance was short. At the end, the audience roared and clapped, enthusiastic, the applause lasting for minutes after the four men had left the stage.
“He’s pretty good,” Saba said.
“He’s terrible. They all are.” Tanuojin propped his long legs up on the rail. “It’s supposed to be an art, not a contest.”
Another Akopra was beginning, or perhaps another scene of the same one: the same dancers came back, two in different masks. Tanuojin was not watching. She looked across the theater at Machou, dimly visible in the far balcony.
They watched a third performance, and Tanuojin said, “This is awful. Let’s go.”
Saba rose. “Are you worried about Ymma?”
“I wouldn’t mind if he broke his leg getting down to the street.”
They went back along the quiet hallway toward the stairs, going at a Styth pace. Just as they reached the door, a harsh voice said, “Saba.”
Saba stood back, taking his hand off the door pull. Paula was between him and Tanuojin. A file of men was walking toward them. Ymma was third in the line. The man in front walked up to Saba. His face was rutted with scars around the eyes. His hair was streaked with white and his ropy gray mustaches hung down over his chest. Paula glanced at his hands, fisted on his hips. On his left wrist was an iron manacle. He said, “Open the door for me, Saba.”
Tanuojin hissed. Machou drew his gaze slowly from Saba to stare over Paula’s head. His chest looked wide as a wall. He radiated confidence. Saba pulled the door open, and they stood there while Machou and his whole crew filed out. Tanuojin swore. He charged through the door behind them.
Paula followed in the hot wake of his temper. Saba came after her. She stopped. Machou and his men were just going out the door to the street.
“That’s what having a father accomplishes.” Tanuojin came up to Saba. “Every time you see a gray hair you back off.”
They went out to the street. The men walked along arguing. Paula looked up over her head. The streets were thick with traffic. The air smelled bad, like grease. Rancid. Nearby a siren began to whine. A man tore past her. Two steps behind him, another man ran after him, the siren screeching on his belt.
They went back to the Barn, the long building at the foot of the rAkellaron House. In the arcade Ketac came to meet them. He had a long knife in a sheath on his belt.
“What happened? We heard you were in a fight at Colorado’s.” He turned to walk beside them, down the arcade.
Tanuojin said, “What’s the watch?”
“About thirty minutes to one bell.”
They went through Saba’s office, across the narrow filing room, and into the little sleeping room. There was a crystal lamp burning and the place was relatively warm. She took off her coat.
“Ymma and Machou just backed us off over at the Akopra,” Tanuojin said.
“Backed you off?” Ketac wheeled toward his father.
Saba sat down on the bed and reached under it for the bottle of liquor. “He’s the Prima Akellar. I don’t see how I can pick a fight with him over precedence. What are you so hot over?” He was talking to his lyo; his voice was genial. “If Ymma challenges you and you start to lose, I’ll step in. And Machou will step into me, and we’ll get the teeth kicked out of us. But I won’t close that market.”
There was a cup on the table by the bed. Paula took the bottle from him and poured a slight two fingers of whiskey into the cup and took it over to the window. Outside, the noisy, filthy city stretched away like a vast tunnel. Sirens roamed in the gloomy streets.
Ketac was saying, “You’re going to fight in the pit.” His voice was thin with excitement. Tanuojin came up to the window, ignoring her beside him.
“Well, maybe,” Saba said.
Tanuojin looked the same as he always did, flute-thin, his gray shirt undecorated, his black slot-buckled belt and leggings like anybody else’s. Paula cast a glance back into the room at Saba. She put the cup on the window sill. “Machou is afraid of him,” she said to Tanuojin.
He stared out the window, his long dished profile toward her. “You’ve blown your tubes. Machou hasn’t even had to fight in sixty or seventy sessions.”
“I take it if Ymma is losing, Machou can jump in and help him?”
“Step in. Yes.”
“That’s why he played that farce at the Akopra. Now he can stay out and nobody will say he’s afraid of Saba. Therefore he’s afraid of Saba.”
The corners of his mouth rolled down; he still refused to look at her. He pulled his mustaches between his thumb and his forefinger. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What is Ymma to you?”
“My cadet. One rank below me. If he beats me he takes rny place.”
