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supplied with snakes. The old man put on a doleful face, wrinkling so deeply he had the look of a woodcarving. Then he spied the Yoalo and did a little caper toward him, flaunting the snake and whistling.

Furious at this interruption, the Yoalo jumped up and seized the snake. Blood spurted out the sides of his fist, and the severed halves of the snake dropped to the sand, writhing. He aimed a backhand at the old man, who dived onto the floor, and weaved toward the door and into the street. With the exception of the snake-seller -he was bemoaning the loss of his prize catch - the village men remained calm, shrugging, joking about the incident. But upon seeing Donnell emerge from the niche, they knocked over their benches and scrambled to the opposite end of the room.

'Lord!' cried the snake-seller, crawling into Donnell's path. 'My eldest was a tenth-level recruit of your cadre. Hear me!'

'Tenth-level,' said Donnell. 'Then he died upon the turret.'

'But well, Lord. He gave no outcry.

'I will listen.' Donnell folded his arms, amused by his easy acceptance of rank, but quite prepared to exercise its duties.

'This,' said the old man, picking up the snake's head, 'this is nothing to the abuses we of Rumelya suffer. But to me this is much.'

He began a lengthy tale of its capture, half a day spent among the rocks, tempting it with a gobbet of meat on a forked stick, breaking its teeth with a twist when it struck. He testified to its worth and listed the Yoalo's other abuses. Rape, robbery, assault. His complaint was not the nature of the offences - they were his right - but that they were performed with such vicious erraticism they had the character of a madman's excesses rather than the strictures of a conqueror. He begged for surcease.

The old man's eyes watered; his skin was moley; his forearms were pitted with scarred puckers, places where he had been bitten and had cut away the flesh to prevent the spread of the poison. These imperfections grated on Donnell, but he did not let them affect his judgement.

'It will be considered,' he said. 'But consider this. I have witnessed great disrespect in Rumelya, and perhaps it is due. But had you honored the Aspect properly, he might well have served you better. Should another take his place, your laxity will be counted a factor in determining the measures of governance.' As he left, he heard the village men haranguing the snake-seller for his lack of caution.

The Yoalo's trail - rayed depressions in the sand -turned left, left again, and Donnell saw the river at the end of the street. Above the treeline on the far bank, the sun's corona raised purple auroras into the night sky, and the stars were so large and bright they appeared to be dancing about into new alignments. The street gave out onto a grassy bank where several long canoes were overturned, and sitting upon one of these was the shadowy figure of the Yoalo. In order to get close, Donnell shifted his visual field forward as he had done on his first visit to the village. This time he noticed a shimmering, inconstant feeling in all his flesh as the suit bore him to the rear of a shed some twenty feet along the bank from the Yoalo's canoe. The man was rocking back and forth, chuckling, probably delighting in the incident of the snake. He touched his forehead, the mask wavered and disappeared. But before Donnell could see his face, the man flattened onto his stomach, leaned out above the river and splashed water over himself. Something ki-yied deep in the forest, a fierce and solitary cry that might have come from a metal throat. Sputtering, the Yoalo propped himself up on an elbow, staring off in Donnell's direction.

Except for the fact that his eyes were dark, betraying no hint of green, he was the spitting image of Jack Richmond. Skull-featured, thin to the point of emaciation.

All the man's behavior, his fits of violence and depression, his harassment of the serving girl, his obsession with speed, clicked into focus for Donnell. He was about to call to him when the man came up into a crouch, his right hand extended, alerted by something. With his left hand, he reached inside his suit and pulled forth a construction of - it seemed - wires and diamonds, and flicked it open. Its unfolding was a slow organic process,