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playing
thali this evening?”
    Thali
was a popular women’s game. Inos had played it at Kinvale a few times.
    Jarthia
was the caravan’s lady champion. Her hot gaze flashed briefly over the
buildings on the far side of the pond and then returned to Inos. “Possibly.”
The women of Tall Cranes would certainly have more valuables to lose than those
of more honest settlements.
    “Oh,
good. My aunt and I might like to join in, for a change.”
    “Mistress
Phattas and yourself are always welcome. “ Jarthia’s voice was
becoming quite sinister with suspicion.
    “Yes.
Well . . . what I had in mind . . . actually . . .”
    Inos
really ought to have planned how best to say this. “What I had in mind
actually was . . . was gambling, and . . . er, cheating?”
     
    Favor
the deceit:
    When
I consider life, ‘tis all a cheat;
    Yet,
fool with hope, men favour the deceit;
    Trust
on, and think tomorrow will repay:
    Tomorrow’s
falser than the former day.
    Dryden,
Aureng-Zebe
     

TWO
     
    Piety Nor Wit
     

1
    Away
from the fire there was moonlight, and even a few stars. There were many other
fires twinkling around Durthing, their smoke drifting up vaguely in the
moonlight. Moonlight was gleaming also on some very brawny clouds banked up in
the west, but if there was wind, it did not penetrate the little valley.
    And
there was no sound! That was the eeriest thing of all. Ogi could hear nothing
but the irregular slither of his own boots on the slope and his own panting. If
Kani had not been imagining things, then every throat in the settlement should
be in full chorus, every cook pot clamoring the alarm.
    He
had thought briefly of going for Uala and the kids, but either he didn’t
think he could move them out fast enough, or else his damnable impish curiosity
had gotten the better of him. He was following Rap to the moot-stow.
    If
there was going to be a massacre, it would start there. The moot-stow was where
the men met to talk and drink and fight. If the Rap-Grindrog match occurred, it
would be held at the moot-stow. Homing Durthing vessels always docked first in
Finrain to unload cargo or passengers, and they always loaded beer. So the
night after a ship returned was always rowdy. The crew itself would be in a
mood for blood after weeks at sea. So would everyone else when the beer ran
out. The moot-stow was an open square of packed clay by the shore with a raised
bank around three sides; on that grew the only large trees left in the valley,
giving shade and rain cover, serving when necessary as grandstands.
    On
nights when no ship had docked, there was music and dancing there, with
lanterns hung in the trees. When there was beer, then a bonfire blazed in the
middle, so a man could see what he was doing. Those nights the women stayed
home. Sea Eagle and Petrel had both beached that day.
    Soon
Ogi saw the flicker of the bonfire and the shapes of men standing on the nearer
bank under the trees. He sensed other men running in from other directions. But
still he heard no sound.
    There
was no law in Durthing-except maybe one. If it had ever been passed by the
Senate and the People’s Assembly in Hub, or signed by some long-dead
imperor, then no copy of the original survived. The jotnar would not have
accepted a written law anyway, but there was an unwritten law, and the Imperial
army had standing orders.
    The
only jotunn settlements tolerated within the Impire were unarmed jotunn
settlements. The lictor at Finrain kept spies in Durthing, and any attempt to
collect weapons would have brought the entire XXIIIrd Legion marching in, five
thousand strong. The jotnar pretended not to know that. They themselves
outlawed weapons, they said, so that quarrels would be settled by more manly
means-with fists and boots. And teeth. Or rocks and tree branches. Daggers were
permissible sometimes, but swords were for cowards.
    And
every law had its exceptions. The senior jotunn in Durthing was Brual,
unofficial mayor. He was aging now, but he was