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Samlor slid the body back through the trap door, from whence its death had sprung. He hoped the victim was not a friend of Hort; he sympathized with simple folk looking for solace apart from the establishment of such as Lord Tudhaliya. But they had made their bed when they stole a child from the House of Kodrix.
The temple had been a single, circular room. It was roofless now, and its girdle of fluted columns had fallen; but the curtain wall within those columns still stood to shoulder height or above. That wall had been constructed around only three-quarters of the circumference, however. A 90° arc looked out unimpeded on the waters of the cove, which lapped almost to the building's foundations.
And out at the mouth of the cove, its hull black upon the phosphorescence through which sweeps drove it languidly, was a trawler. The vessel's sail was furled because of the breeze that began to push against the rising ride when the land cooled faster than the sea.
There were sounds outside the temple. Mice, perhaps, or dogs; or even tramps looking for at least the semblance of shelter.
More likely not. Nothing Hort had said suggested that the ceremony pla
Samlor slipped back the way he had come. He set the tip of the Beysib bow between the edge of the trap door and its jamb. That wedged the door open a crack, through which Samlor could hear better and see; and be seen, but the lights would be dim against discovery, and the alcove was some protection as well. Then Samlor waited, with a reptile's patience, and the chill certainty of a reptile as well.
The firstcomers were blurs bringing no illumination at all. Shawls, pantaloons like those the guard had worn, sweeping nervously through Samlor's field of vision. They chattered in undertones. Occasionally someone raised a voice to call what might have been a name: 'Shaushga!' The corpse stiffening at Samlor's feet made no reply.
Then a hull grated on the strand. There were more voices, and more of the voices were male. Water slopped between shore and hull as at least a dozen persons dropped over the trawler's gunwale. Then the temple floor rasped beneath the horn-hard soles of barefooted fishermen. A tiny oil lamp gleamed like the sun to light-starved eyes.
In the centre of the open room, a Beysib in red robes set down the burden he carried. It was Star, had to be Star. She was dressed also in red. Her hair had been plaited into short tendrils so that the blaze above her forehead seemed to have eight white arms.
'I don't want to,' the child cried distinctly. 'I want to go to bed.' She refused to support herself with her legs, curling to the pavement when the Beysib set her down.
The man in red and a woman as nondescript as the others in a brown and black shawl bent to the child. They spoke urgently and simultaneously in Beysib and a melange of local dialects. The latter were almost equally unintelligible to Samlor for the accent and poor acoustics. The man in red held Star by the shoulders, but he was coaxing rather than trying to force her to rise.
The trawler had been crabbed further into the cove so that Samlor could no longer see it from his vantage point. The Cir-donian held his body in a state of readiness, but at not quite the bowstring tautness of the instant before slaughter. There would be slaughter, nothing could be more certain than that; but for the moment, Samlor continued to wait. There were ten, perhaps twenty, Beysib within the temple wall at the moment. Some of them were between Star and the hidden door. That would not keep Samlor from striking if the need arose, but there was at least a chance that some of those now milling in the room would spread out if the ceremony began.
Star had gotten to her feet. She was pouting in the brief glimpse Samlor had of her face as she turned. He could not imagine how anyone had taken Star for the maid's daughter. Even the set other lips was a mirror of Samlane's.
The Beysib chattering ceased. Their feet brushed quickly to positions flanking the temple opening. It was much as Samlor had hoped. Star stretched her hands out, palms forward, towards the cove. The man in red was still with her, but the woman had joined the others just outside the building. Star began chanting in a bored voice. The syllables were not in any language with which Samlor was familiar. From the regularity of the sounds, it was possible that they were from no language at all, merely forming a pattern to concentrate nonverbal portions of the brain.
Samlor tensed. He had already chosen the spot through which his dagger would enter the kidneys of the man in red. Then, suddenly, Lord Tudhaliya's troopers swept into the gathering with cries of bloody triumph.
The security forces might have intended to take a few prisoners, but as Samlor bolted from his hiding place, he saw a woman cut in half. The trooper who killed her had a sword almost four feet long in the blade. His horizontal, two-handed cut took her in the small of the back and bisected her navel on the way out.
The troopers had approached dismounted, of course. Even so, they had shown abnormal skill for cavalrymen in creeping up among the ruins. There was no way of telling how many of them there were, but it was certainly more than the squad that had made the arrests that morning. Lights began to flare, dark lanterns like Samlor's own still hissing in the tu
The red-garbed Beysib bawled in horror and tried to enfold Star in his cloak, as if that would serve as any protection from what was about to happen. Samlor smashed the Beysib down with the dagger's hilt to his forehead, not from mercy, but because the point might have caught and held the weapon for moments the Cirdonian did not have to lose. Samlor grabbed the screaming child by the shoulder and spun for the tu
A Beysib cavalryman leaped from the crumbling wall. He was aiming a kick at Samlor's head.
The angle was different, but too many camels had launched feet at the caravan master for Samlor to be caught unprepared. The boot slashed by his ear as he pivoted. The Beysib's sword was cocked for a blow that the fellow had to hold until he landed, or he risked lopping off his own feet. The long weapon did nothing to keep the Beysib's momentum from impaling him on the Cirdonian dagger. Samlor slipped the hilt as it punched home. He tossed Star to the trap door and rammed her through as he jumped in himself.
When Samlor tried to bang the stone door to, a Beysib sword shot through the gap and kept the edges from meeting. Instead of tugging against the springy steel, Samlor let the Beysib's own pull open'the trap again. Samlor lunged upward through the opening. Before the sword could be transformed once more from a pry bar into a weapon, the Cirdonian had buried his boot knife in the trooper's throat.
The sword dropped into the tu
'Come on. Star, I'm your uncle!' Samlor shouted as he grabbed the nearest handful of the child. He did not particularly care whether she obeyed or even understood, for there was no time now to wait on a four-year-old's legs. He let the Beysib sword lie, because he needed his right hand for the lantern. Its unshuttered light seemed shockingly bright in the closeness. Samlor ran bent over, the girl under his arm as the cask had been when he came from the punt.