The young woman made a fast, down-the-street assess- ment that undoubtedly took in the lack of impending aid, and a second that assessed him. Then, she snorted and dodged awayafter the group's leader.

With a swallowed curse, Mikhyel ran after her, caught her when she had to pause at a branching and seized her arm, holding her despite her protests.

Her hair hung in mud-soaked rattails, the simple wrap- around shirt hung loose on one side, pulled nearly free of the strip of ragged cloth that acted as a sash, exposing a heaving chest and one practically nonexistent breast. Poor skinny thing was not exactly the sort one would expect to find on the receiving end of such a group activity.

In the next moment, all thoughts of her physical attrac- tions vanished as through that hold on her elbow, and for the second time since arriving in Khoratum, he had that sense of awareness, of almost-recognition. This time, clearer-headed, he blocked it off the instant he suspected it: the last complication he needed was some local recogniz- ing him.

Still, he wondered where he could he have met her, then knew that he had not. He'd never have forgotten such haunted eyes.

"Let me go," the girl spat, breaking the silence, and those haunted and haunting eyes narrowed in anger. She jerked her arm, trying to pull free.

"Let the law handle it, mistress, please."

"Mistress." Her eyes scanned him. "Like that, is it? Well, the law doesn't exist for me, rijhili. And no one challenges that lot."

"You know them?"

"The leader . . . he's Giebhaidii."

Giebhaidii. Nethaalye's family. Mikhyel no longer won- dered at the selective deafness in the tavern.

"They've threatened me before," the young woman con- tinued, "but this was the first time they followed. Now I have to take care of it myself, if tomorrow's not to be a repetition of today, and that means making that berinjhili useless for a month."

Berinjhilithe mountain equivalent of bastard, but it im- plied much about the recipient's genitalia as well. He'd learned any number of useful bits from Deymorin last night. Bits not found anywhere in Nikki's notes.

He controlled a smile. "I think you probably took care of his love life for the next year."

"Rakshi should be so kind." She shivered, and the elbow in his relaxed hold jerked free.

"Where's your home?" he asked. "Would you like me to see you there?"

"You? What good would you be, you who can do noth- ing more than call for nonexistent authorities?"

She tugged her shirt into alignment and stormed past him, bound for the main street. But she was shaken, the blindest man could see that, and limping.

"Mistress, please wait."

Her steps never faltered. Feeling a fool, he chased after her, fell into step beside her and pulled out his purse, wish- ing he'd brought more with him.

"Here."

He held it out to her, received the briefest, disdainful glance.

"At least let me buy you a decent meal."

"Then what? What about tomorrow? Or the next day?

or the next? My stomach knows its allowance. I'll not lie to it to satisfy your altruistic-deed-for-the-day quota."

He lifted the purse. "There's enough here to satisfy your stomach for a month."

She plucked it from his hold, bounced it lightly in her hand. "At least a year, valley-man." She tossed it back at him, not looking to see if he caught it.

Not caring.

"Dammit, girl." He grabbed her arm and planted his feet, forcing her to stop and face him. "I'm not the one who attacked you. I'm sorry everyone in there ignored what was happening to you. I didn't know why. I don't know why. I don't care. I'm just trying to help someone who doesn't seem to deserve the fate she's been handed. Ex- plain, if you will, how that makes me the villain?"

Her eyes raked him up and down.

"In return for what, you who call me 'mistress.' "

"Nothing. "

"You see? Even to yourself, you lie, You offer because it makes you feel superior to think you can help one of us.

Our lives were so meager before you arrived."

He winced, hearing his own evaluation of the situation here applied once again and so ruthlessly to his own actions.

"Well, fuck you!" she hissed, using the lowest, com- monest of those words Deymorin's mind had supplied. "I'm not your mistress! I'm nobody's mistress!"

And in one smooth motion, she whipped around, pulling free and flinging a bare foot in his direction. But her ex- hausted reflexes robbed the move of its earlier snap. He stepped back, caught the flying foot, sending her off- balance, released the foot for her wrist and, flung an arm around her tiny waist to keep her upright.

He meticulously released her the instant her balance was back, but not before he felt the chill permeating her thin body.

"Please, come back to my rooms with me." He held up a hand to stop her protest. "Just to get warm. And a small meal. I'll not lay another hand on you. I certainly won't force you. Not here, not in my room. But I assure you, I've no designs on your virtue. I'm just protecting myself."

She frowned suspiciously. "How?"

"I'll not get any sleep for the rest of my stay wondering what happened to you."

Her eyes dropped, her head angled down and away, and the thick fall of muddy hair obscured any expression.

"My room has a private bath," he persisted, sensing a weakening resolve.

With a faint hint of laughter edging her voice, she asked: "Who are you, lowlander, and where are you from, that you persist so?"

"Who? I My name's Mikhyel." The truth was out be- fore he remembered, and once committed, he realized that, deep within, he wanted no lies between them. "I'm from Rhomatum."

She stared at him a moment. Then took a step closer, and stared, and laughed again, a heart-lurching, half-sob- bing sound. "Well, who am I to say no to Mikhyel of Rhomatum?"

Despite her brave front, the young woman was stumbling with exhaustion by the time they reached his rented room.

The manager looked at him strangely when he requested a cot and more towels, but didn't question his personal addi- tion to his room's . . . accoutrements.

At least not to his face. The rumors would undoubtedly be flying by morningbut nothing more than Korelli dun- Kharin's reputation could handle.

"Bath?" he asked, when they'd reached the room.

The young woman, standing in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around her, nodded, and in a tiny voice an- swered: "Please."

The claustrophobic bath cubical contained only a footed tub, a simple drying tube, and the towel-warmer. Hardly the private pool he had at home, but it had running water and a door with a lock. For the young woman waiting out- side on legs that could barely keep her upright, it meant privacy, warmth, and an end to the mud in her hair and clothing, and he doubted she'd seen better.

At least, not recently. Before . . . as with Ganfrion, he didn't think she'd been born to her current lifestyle. She had about her the air of survival, not acceptance.

On his return, he discovered the cot had arrived along with a maid bearing extra towels and a voluminous robe.

Older, with a plump, motherly face that smiled at the world in general, the maid hustled about the room, changing the sheets on the cot, then into the bath. She emerged and pronounced the room ready whenever Miss desired, and if Miss would just hand out her clothes, she'd see they were washed and ready by morning.

"Miss will damnwell see to miss' self," was the hissed response.

The maid nodded calmly and went off to see to the din- ner for two Mikhyel had requested. The moment the door closed behind her, Mikhyel hissed back, "That was unkind and unnecessary! Act however you like to me, but"

"Oh, shut up," she said wearily, and she slipped into the bathing room. "I'm already sorry enough."

"I'll tell her."

"Not just her. For agreeing to come here in the first place." She turned and leaned her head against the door- frame, and she looked so sad and weary he was hard put not to take her into his arms . . .

As he would a child. Or one of his brothers, he assured his conscience.

"I'll use your bath, and thank you sincerely for the op- portunity, Mikhyel of Rhomatum, but then I'll leave. I've no wish to abuse your hospitality."

"That's not necessary. I didn't bring you here to . . ."

And then he wondered exactly why he had brought her here. It seemed quite probable that she had a home and family far safer than a stranger's rental rooms.

But she wanted the bath, and considering her lack of real resistance to accompanying him here, Mikhyel suspected that she, like the boy who had met him that first night, spent her nights in those shadowed alleys.

She smiled, though that stretch of lips failed to wipe the sadness away, and wilted backward, closing the door softly between them.

And slid the bolt to. Noisily.

Food arrived before the bolt slid back again, simple fare of cheese, fruit, and bread, with a pleasant, local wine. But the young woman, in an opinion stated through the closed door, adamantly refused to join him.

Wisdom of experience, he supposed recalling her earlier protests regarding her stomach and lies, but still Mikhyel found himself unable to swallow. She was going to finish her bath and leave, and nothing he could say would stop her.

He was a fool to care, but some part of him had assumed responsibility for her the first time their eyes met. Collect- ing stray dogs, Deymorin would say. Habits of a lifetime, his own logic mocked.

Something deeper said neither Deymorin nor logic had the right of it. He wanted her to stay to proveto himself as well as herthat he was not the . . . rijhli she and the boy accused him of being.

Inside the bathing room, she'd begun, from the sounds, to dry her hair in the warm pressurized air flowing up from the heating caves, the final luxury of this unpretentious room. But that shoulder-length mass, thick as it was, shouldn't take as long to dry as she spent, and he wasn't surprised when she emerged dressed in clothing stained and wrinkled, but overall clean and mostly dry.

She stood just inside the room, pleating her hem between nervous fingertips. "I want to thank you, Mikhyel of Rho- matum. I know you didn't intend me any harm, and I want you to understand my leaving is not because I don't trust your word or your honor. Unfortunately, if I stay here, I'll bring trouble on you, and I don't want that to happen. So, thank you, and fare"

"Well? I don't think that's possible, if I let you leave like this."

He'd stood when she entered, wineglass forgotten in his hand. He set the glass down, and crossed to stand in front of her, cupped her chin in his hand and raised it, until she relented and met his gaze.

At this close range, her eyes took on a familiar cast; the gray, like his own eyes, was streaked with a tiny webwork of spring-green. Unlike his, hers held a melancholy, a wild, tender innocence.

He was more loath than ever to condemn her again to the streets.

"Please, stay here tonight," he said. "You'll have the bed to yourself, and I'll not come near you. I've . . . not much appetite for such activity under the best of circumstances, and my health lately has not been the best, which leaves me with little energy to spare. Certainly none for such . . .

athletic endeavors."

Her uncertain look deepened.

"I just want to know you're safe for tonight, child. That you've not taken ill from their treatment, and that you've had one good night's sleep before I send you out to face those ill-mannered street-scum again. I wish I could con- vince you to eat something . . ." He looked suggestively toward the small table, had the satisfaction of seeing those fine eyes blink away dampness, and the mouth quiver with obvious desire. "Please?"

Her hands clenched white-knuckled on the pleats. Then her shoulders dropped, and the wrinkled hem fell free. She edged over to the table, and lifted a small apple with hands that shook pitifully to a mouth that forced itself to take just one small bite. Long-lashed lids obscured her haunting eyes as she chewed and swallowed deliberately.

Another small bite, similarly savored.

Then the eyes opened wide and her head dipped as though a decision had been reached.

"All right. But just tonight. And you take the bed."

"But"

"It's not negotiable, Rhomatum. Argue, and your con- science can find another cure."

He found a smile happening from some devilish person inside him. "But you've already eaten my apple."

"So I have." She dug in her sash, surfaced with a tiny packet, a many-folded strip of cloth. Producing a coin from within this makeshift purse, she laid it on the table, and, chin determinedly thrust out, surveyed the rest of the meal, and wrapped a loaf and sizable chunk of cheese into a napkin, tied the corners and tucked it as well through the rag-belt. "I think you come out somewhat ahead. Barris- ter." She brushed past him, reaching for the door.

All altogether different internal devil grabbed her elbow and forced her around.

"What did you call me?"

"Barrister? You are, aren't you, Mikhyel dunMheric?"

"Yes, but . . ." Only after a fashion. And no one called him that except Deymorin. "How long have you known?"

She shrugged. "Your picture's posted all over. I suppose your clean-shaven face might throw some in passing, and you're early . . ." She shrugged again. But the memory of that sense of something that had passed between them when they first touched, flared anew.

"Why didn't you say something before now?" he asked.

"Who am I to interfere with the whims of the rich?"

And yet, she'd not called him dunMhericnot first.

She'd called him Barrister. How could this starved waif know...

But, of course, she couldn't. And the challenge in her eyes was just that. He picked up the coin, tucked it in her belt when she wouldn't take it.

Ignoring her, he stripped, as freely as if she weren't standing in the room, put on his sleeping shirt, and re- treated to the bed.