done. Women are beautiful and they make fantastic dancers. One of the figures done was that of a girl, a slave, who encounters one who is afflicted with plague. She, a slave, knows that if she should contract the disease she would, in all probability, be summarily slain. She dances her terror at this. This was followed by the figure of obedience, and that by the figure of joy.
I looked about and did not see, any longer, the white-skinned, dark-haired girl, she who had been serving paga.
I was growing irritated, and a little drunk. It seemed to me that by now, surely, the blond-haired barbarian should have been picked up.
I glanced again at the aba by the wall. I could still see, beneath it, the lusciousness of a girl's curves. What marvelous slaves they make.
Suddenly I howled with rage and threw over the small table behind which I sat. I in two strides was at the aba, and I tore it away.
'Master!' screamed the girl beneath it, looking up, frightened.
It was not the blond-haired barbarian. It was the white-skinned, dark-haired girl, collared, in her bit of pleasure silk, who had been serving paga.
I pulled her to her knees by the hair. 'Where is the other girl!' I demanded. 'Where!'
'What is going on here?' cried the proprietor of the tavern, who had come in earlier, and was now behind the counter, ladling out paga.
One of the paga attendants came running toward me, but, seeing my eyes; hesitated. Several men were now on their feet. The musicians had stopped playing. The dancer stood still, on the sand, startled.
'Where is the girl who was under this aba,' I demanded. 'Where!'
'What girl was it?' asked the proprietor. 'Whose was she?'
'She was brought in by Kunguni, when you were out,' said one of the black girls.
'I gave orders that he was not again to be admitted to this tavern!' said the man.
'You were not here,' moaned the girl. 'We feared to tell a free man he could not enter.'
'Where were you?' called the proprietor to the attendant. 'I was in the kitchen,' he said. 'I did not know she had been brought in by Kunguni.'
Angrily I threw the girl I held from me.
'Who saw her leave, with whom?' I demanded.
Men looked at one another.
'How came you beneath the aba?' I asked the girl whom I had thrown to one side.
'A man told me to creep beneath it,' she said. 'I did not see him! He told me not to look around!'
'You are lying,' I told her.
'Be merciful, Master,' she said. 'I am only a slave!'
The paga attendant, he who was closest to me of the crowd, was looking at me, intently. I did not understand this. He edged uneasily backward. I did not understand this. I had not threatened him.
'A silver tarsk to the man who can find me that girl,' I said.
The black girls looked at one another. 'She was only a pot girl,' said one of them.
'A silver tarsk,' I said; repeating my offer, 'to he who can find me that slave.'
'Look at his eyes,' said the paga attendant, backing away another step.
She could not have been gone long. I must hunt her in the streets.
Suddenly the dancer on the sand threw her hands before her face, and screamed. Then she pointed at me.
'It is the plague!' she cried. 'It is the plague!'
The paga attendant, stumbling, turned and ran. 'Plague!' he cried. Men fled from the tavern. I stood alone by the wall. Tables had been overturned. Paga was spilled upon the floor.
The tavern seemed, suddenly, eerily quiet. Even the paga girls had fled.
I could hear shouting outside, in the streets, and screaming.
'Call guardsmen!' I heard.
'Kill him,' I heard. 'Kill him!'
I walked over to a mirror. I ran my tongue over my lips. They seemed dry. The whites of my eyes, clearly, were yellow. I rolled up the sleeve of my tunic and saw there, on the flesh of the forearm, like black blisters, broken open, erupted, a scattering of pustules.
9
I Decide To Change My Lodgings
'Master?' cried Sasi.
'Do not fear,' I said to her. 'I am not ill. But we must leave this place quickly.
'Your face,' she said. 'It is marked!'
'It will pass,' I said. I unlocked her bracelets and slipped them into my pouch.
'I fear I may be traced here,' I said. 'We must change lodgings.'
I had left the paga tavern by a rear door and then swung myself up to a low roof, and then climbed to a higher one. I had made my way over several roofs until I had found a convenient and lonely place to descend. I had then, wrapped in the discarded aba of Kunguni, made my way through the streets to the Cove of Schendi. Outside, from the wharves and from the interior of the city, I could hear the ringing of alarm bars. 'Plague!' men were crying in the streets.
'Are you not ill, Master?' asked Sasi.
'I do not think so,' I said.
I knew that I had not been in a plague area. Too, the Bazi plague had burned itself out years ago. No cases to my knowledge had been reported for months. Most importantly, perhaps, I simply did not feel ill. I was slightly drunk and heated from the paga, but I did not believe myself fevered. My pulse and heartbeat, and respiration, seemed normal. I did not have difficulty catching my breath. I was neither dizzy nor nauseous, and my vision was clear. My worst physical symptoms were the irritation about my eyes and the genuinely nasty itchiness of my skin. I felt like tearing it off with my own fingernails.
'Are you of the metal workers or the leather workers?' she asked.
'Let us not bother about that now,' I said, knotting the cords on the sea bag. I looked about the room. Aside from Sasi what I owned there was either on my person or in the sea bag.
'A girl likes to know the caste of her master,' she said.
'Let us be on our way,' I said.
'Perhaps it is the merchants,' she said.
'How would you like to be whipped?' I asked her.
'I would not like that,' she said.
'Let us hurry,' I said.
'You do not have time to whip me now, do you?' she asked.
'No,' I said, 'I do not.'
'I thought not,' she said. 'I do not think it is the peasants.'
'I could always whip you later,' I said.
'That is true,' she agreed. 'Perhaps I should best he quiet.'
'That is an excellent insight on your part,' 1 said.
'Thank you, Master,' she said.
'If I am caught, and it is thought that I have the plague,' I said, 'you will doubtless be exterminated before I am.'
'Let us not dally,' she said. We left the room.
'You have strong hands,' she said. 'Is it the potters?'
'No,' I said.
