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Saash's luck in getting herself adopted by the ehhif who worked there. Luck, though, she thought, almost certainly has nothing to do with it, in our line of work….
    She jumped down from the wall, ran under a parked car, looked both ways from underneath it, and hurried across the street. Saash, now crouched down against the wall of the garage, saw her coming, got up, and stretched fore and aft.
    She was a long-limbed, delicate-featured, skinny little thing. Rhiow wondered one more time whatever could be the matter with her that she didn't seem able to put on weight: Saash was hardly there. Her coloring supported the illusion. In coat she was a hlah'feihre, what ehhif called a tortoiseshell— but not one of the bold, splashy ones. Saash's coat was patched softly in many shades and shapes of brown, gray, and beige, all running into one another: in some lights, and most especially in shadow, you could look straight at her and hardly see her. It was probably something to do with her kittenhood, which she rarely discussed— but hiding had been a large part of it, and you got the feeling Saash wouldn't be done with that aspect of her life for a long time, if ever. She had never quite grown into her ears, and the size of them gave her a look of eternal kittenishness— while the restless way they swiveled made her look eternally wary and uneasy, despite the ironic humor in her big gold eyes.
    " 'Luck," Rhiow said, and Saash immediately turned her back, sat down, put her left back leg over her left shoulder, and began to wash furiously. Rhiow sat down, too, and sighed. Another cat would probably have sniffed and walked off at the rudeness, but Rhiow had been working long enough with Saash to know it wasn't intentional.
    "Is it bad this morning?" Rhiow said.
    Saash kept washing. "Not like last week," she muttered. "Abha'h put that white stuff on me again, the powder." There was another second's satisfied pause. "I took a few strips off him while he was putting it on, anyway. Whether the junk does help or not, it still smells disgusting. And the taste—!"
    Rhiow gazed off in the direction of the street, waiting for Saash to finish washing, and making faces at the flea powder, and scratching, and shaking herself. Rhiow privately doubted that the problem was fleas. Saash simply seemed to be allergic to her own skin, and itched all the time, no matter what anyone did: she couldn't make more than a move or two before stopping to put her fur back in order, even when it was perfectly smooth. When they had started working together, Rhiow had thought the constant grooming was vanity, and blows had been exchanged over it. Now she knew better.
    Saash shook her coat out and sat down again properly. "There," she said. "I'm sorry, Rhi. 'Luck to you too."
    "You heard?"
    "They called me," Saash said in her little breathy voice, "right in the middle of breakfast. Typical."
    "I was sleeping myself. Any sign of Urruah yet?"
    Saash looked disdainful. "He's probably snoring at the bottom of that Dumpster he was describing in such ecstatic detail yesterday." She made an ironic breath-smelling face, one suggestive of a cat whiffing something better suited for a houff to roll in than for any kind of meal.
    "Saash," Rhiow said, "for pity's sake, don't start in on him this morning: I can't cope.— Were They more specific with you than They were with me? I got a sense that something was wrong with the north-side gate again, but that was all."
    Saash looked over her shoulder and washed briefly down her back. " Au, it's the north one, all right," she said, straightening up again. "It looks like someone did an out-of-hours access and forgot that the north gate's diurnicity timings change when it's accessed. So it's sitting there still patent."
    "And after we just got the hihhhh thing fixed…!" Rhiow lashed her tail in irritation.
    "My thought exactly."
    "But who in the worlds would be accessing it out-hours without checking the rates first? That's pretty