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moment, Dane moved through the noisy, head-swimming glare of the market,
thinking of the tavern and the rumors he had heard.
White. Faster than a granth. Six legs and that was rare, even in the worlds of
Unity. Certainly no native beast. Demons from the stars, who threw fire and carried
people away in the bellies of their metal carts. Dravash had better hear about this,
right away.
He saw the flash of a familiar blue tunic, threw up an arm in greeting, then saw it
was not Master Rhomda, but another of the Anka'an Order, a leaner man, angular,
a scarecrow moving with a dancer's grace. His face was thin and hooknosed. He
returned Dane's greeting with an indifferent, courteous gesture, shifted the deadly
spear from one carrying position to another with the same elegant precision which
was becoming familiar to Dane, and strode away across the square. Dane hesitated,
half inclined to hurry after him and ask about the "Star Demons" against whom, it
seemed, the Anka'an Order had been summoned. But the strange Spearman was
already out of sight, and it would be easier to hunt
up Master Rhomda who had a friendly interest in the boy Joda and had dropped
in, once or twice, at the house where Aratak and Dravash were staying.
He reached the opposite side of the market and plunged into the grateful duskiness
of the Street of Strangers an area where houses were always available on an
arrangement Dane would have called short-term leases, for travelers and traders.
Dravash and Aratak had taken such a house for themselves and their "servants"
Dane, Rianna, and young Joda and no one had thought to question that they were,
indeed, jewel traders from distant Raife. If they had, indeed, been merchants, this
would have been a highly successful trip; the Council of Protectors, back at Unity
Central, had assembled for their use an enormous collection of jewels, large and
small, which were common and cheap over much of the Unity, but on Belsar, rare
and expensive, though not unknown. They could have lived in modest luxury for the
rest of their lives on the proceeds of the sale. Dane hoped they wouldn't have to.
The house Dravash had found for them was a large, flat-roofed, sprawling affair of
wood and brick, built around a central courtyard; there was a section set aside for
humans, and for the subhumans Dravash had hired to do menial work for them.
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Dane, Rianna and Joda shared one section of this, a flat reed roof set on poles,
which was kept continuously wet with a sprinkler arrangement, for coolness inside,
curtained by flaps of thin coarse cloth which kept out insects at night. Dane found
the place damp, and the subhumans who had inhabited it before him had not been
of the cleanest habits, but it was pleasantly cool and quiet.
The sun had lowered enough that a part of the courtyard was in shadow, and
Rianna and Joda were working out there, in the shadow of the long wall. Rianna
was taking her position seriously; she had spent long hours teaching the boy the
rudiments of the curious almost-judo of her own world, which she called by a name
meaning, "the art of making an attacker defeat himself." In addition, she had made
Dane teach him the rudiments of karate, and, finally, exercise with him in
swordplay.
He's improving, Dane thought as he watched Joda and Rianna, rehearsing the moves
of the defensive art. Perhaps it was only that he was not quite as afraid of
Rianna as he had been of his father, and that she had never beaten or ridiculed him;
his stance no longer had the mixture of cringing
sullenness and insolence which had turned Dane against him from the first.
Intensive training was beginning to wash the awkwardness out of his limbs.
"No, no," Rianna said, watching him sharply, "You still back away at the very
minute you should charge! Like this " she made a swift movement toward him
and, unavoidably, he flinched.
He must have been beaten within an inch of his life. It would make some kids defiant.
It only made him more timid than ever. Beatings are no cure for cowardice, but that
must have been exactly how the kid's father went about it.
Rianna stopped in mid-stride. She said, with a gentleness that Dane found
surprising, "Joda, don't you know yet that I'm not really going to hurt you? My
defenses were wide open look. All you had to do was catch me like this " and she
reached out to take his arm in the hold she intended, but again, he cringed and drew
out of reach.
"You did hurt me, the other day," he defended himself. "Look, I've still got the
bruise!"
Rianna's temper flared; she opened her mouth for a sharp retort.
"Someday you will meet someone who really intends to hurt you, and if you aren't
ready " she began, then, visibly mastering her irritation, said quietly, "Then you
had better go over there on the sand, and practice falling some more, until you know
that falling won't hurt you as much as you think. Your worst enemy isn't the bruises
you get, it's your fear of them."
Cringing, sullen, the boy went off to the opposite side of the court, and Rianna,
mopping her forehead with one of her gypsy scarfs, came toward Dane.
Dane, looking after Joda, said, "He's pretty hopeless, isn't he?"
"Not really," Rianna demurred, "but of course he doesn't fit into this culture at
all."
"I think," Dane said, lowering his voice so that the youngster wouldn't hear he
was dutifully practicing the elementary exercises of relaxing and trying to fall
completely limp in the pit of soft sand "that he'd be a misfit on any world."
"Why don't you like him, Dane?"
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"I don't know. He's " Dane searched for the right word " he's nasty. Mean.
Sarcastic. Cowardly. I just can't stand the sight of him, and that's a fact."
Rianna shrugged. "This world is pretty hostile to anybody
who doesn't have the courage or fighting skills to face it. How would you feel if
you'd had to face nothing but hostility all your life? You'd probably be aggressive in
mean, nasty little ways, too."
Dane doubted if anything could have made him that obnoxious, and said so.
"The trouble with you is," Rianna said, sharply, "you have no imagination.
Basically you're a lot like the poor child's father; you despise him because he isn't as
brave as you are! If he'd grown up on a civilized world, he'd be in a University
somewhere, learning to be a scientist or an astronomer or something suited to his
talents and interests! And he'd be a different youngster! I'm just trying to help him
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