shirt, loose black trousers, and corded leather sandals.
Carl dressed and was lea by Allin around the blossomed partition to a garishly lit chamber, reminiscent of a SoHo art gallery.
A group of a dozen people stared at him and began a swift numerical exchange. He was being sold.
The bargaining went quickly. Within moments, a bald and sinewy little man was clasping to Carl's wrist a sturdy strap attached to a thickly corded leash. The leash was metal-clamped to his belt.
Allin was pleased. 'You've earned Tarfeather enough fiber cord for another counsel tent and two tree homes.'
'That much?' Carl peered into his owner's coriaceous face. 'What makes me worth anything to you? I don't have any skills. You haven't even interviewed me.'
He looked at Carl distrustfully and then at Allin.
'Doesn't he know?'
'You'll be taking the place of Picwah's son in the lottery'
Allin informed Carl with his pyknic leer, 'as well as working as his servant for one tenth of a cycle. After that, if you're still alive, you're free.'
'Thanks.'
`As part of the deal,' Allin added, ' I promised your lord Picwah that if you caused him any trouble I would cut off your ears.' He grinned like a wolf. 'You know, of course, I'd have traded you to the zotl themselves for a Foke. It's your fortune that the last prisoners were taken on to Galgul before we arrived. Farewell, dropping. Work hard.'
Picwah snapped at Carl's wrist leash. 'Come on-I have much to do.'
'Wait!' The command cracked from across the gallery through the veils of muttering from other negotiations.
Carl heard it and looked. Picwah didn't and kept going.
His leash jerked taut against Carl's immobility, and the scrawny man was yanked to his haunches.
`Are you acting up already?' he almost-screamed, popping to his feet and glaring at Carl.
Carl thumbed his attention to the approaching figures. Ile woman he had seen earlier by the algal pools was rushing across the chamber. In her wake were two blue-robed, wide-bodied Foke.
'A wizan,' Allin noted and dutifully bowed.
The fragrance of rose madder accompanied her as she stepped up to Carl, her gray-streaked eyes flecked with redgold regarding him as if his face were a mirror.
Carl played his gaze over her oak-brown hair and
the lynx angles of her face. 'Evoe,' he guessed in a wishful whisper. ,
Surprise swung across her face. ' I do know you,' she breathed back. 'But from where?'
The guards were watching her with anxiety. 'How do you know her personal name?' one of them queried Carl.
'My lady, you are distressed,' the other said to her. 'We should go.'
She touched Carl's arm, and a blur of energy warmed him. 'Why are you here?' she asked.
Carl held up his strapped wrist. 'I've been sold.' He cast a nod to Allin. 'By him.'
She looked hard at Allin. 'Why are you selling him? He looks Foke-worthy.'
Allin met her stare with a stern countenance. 'He has been wizan-appraised, my lady.' The Foke warrior observed the wizan guards' edginess, and he asked: 'What has distressed you?'
Evoe said nothing, for she was watching Carl for what was familiar.
'The last of her kin, a distaff aunt, was a prisoner in Rhene,' a guard related. 'We had come with the ransom to free her. But she has already been taken to Galgul.'
That last word cracked the guard's voice. Allin nodded in sympathy to their anxiety. 'You are indeed distressed, my lady,' he said loudly to her; then, to the guards: 'You must take her to where she can rest.'
'Will you came with me?' Evoe asked Carl.
His heart was squashed with feeling. The eld skyle had been right about this woman-she was all the colors of waking to him, the flesh of dreams. She wasn't shimmeringly beautiful or vein-poundingly erotic. But her slender face enthralled him with its waif eyes and a puckish smile that showed small white teeth. What could he say?
He loved the melody of her features.
The guards took her arms and she shrugged them off. 'Will you come with me?' she asked again, more urgently.
'Yes,' Carl's whole body said.
'Lady!' Allin barked.' 'We have witnesses to your distress. I am hereby overriding your authority by Foke right for the Foke good.'
The guards seized her. She slumped and twisted, throwing herself against one guard for purchase and heaving the other to the ground. With her free arm, she jabbed viperlike at the remaining guard's face, and she was free. Her hand reached into the guard's robe, and she came away with a pistol.
