find what you’re searching for here. They’re still dancing in the city. Let me take the torch.”
With a gentle but firm grasp on the other man’s shoulder, he was able to urge him along. Little to be read from tracks in the dry sand, but to be safe and confuse the trail as much as he could, he led the other man close to the boat—so close that he tripped.
“By the Leader of my fathers!” The stranger glared at Ilbran. “Are you so drunk that you can’t see where you’re going?”
Ilbran spoke meekly to him, and led him south, to the easier path. It was wider and less steep, but still, guiding the man’s uncertain steps took all of Ilbran’s attention. Fear of death by torture, thoughts of traitorousness, thoughts of his duty to care for his family, were all forgotten in the simple necessity of keeping the drunken stranger from dragging the two of them over the cliff.
But they reached the top safely and Ilbran coaxed him on through the winding streets. The light of a bonfire drew them to the quarter where Festival still went on. The Great Dance had ended long ago; the dancers had abandoned their slow pattern-weaving. Now they circled and spun to the quick and flirting rhythm of drum-beat and shrill pipes. Ilbran’s chance-met acquaintance stumbled forward, and a girl with a wine-stained and torn festival robe, and many-colored cords braided into her pale hair, broke away from the group and pulled him into the dance.
Another girl caught at Ilbran’s arm. Her gold-brown skin and light-brown hair spoke of mixed southern blood. She looked up into his face and laughed, trying to draw him toward the dance. Around her wrists were wide metal bands, too thick and plain to be bracelets; she was one of the catlens, who carried their defenses with them always. He could see the heavy white scars where those claws had been welded onto her wrists.
These ones would dance away the night, and leave at last, two by two. Ilbran suddenly felt a great longing for sweet ordinary life, for someone’s love, but not tonight, of all nights. He tried to break away gently, making a joke of it.
“Choose some braver one, lady,” he said. “I fear your claws.”
That was a mistake. She giggled and clenched her fist a little, to make the brazen claws spring out from between her fingers, hooked and sharp. She ran them lightly down his arm. They drew fine lines of blood.
“Gently, my lady.” Through his exasperation and impatience, he could see the humor of this predicament, if it were only happening at some other time. “Let me go. You’ll find another who’s more to your liking.” The girl was clinging to him out of sheer maliciousness, he was sure. He had no illusions of irresistible charm.
He pried her fingers loose from his wrist, like prying a shellfish loose from a rock. He had no wish to offend her, and besides, he had a healthy respect for those claws. As he pulled loose one hand, the other one locked itself around his wrist. This was a game with rules, a puzzle he had to solve—to find some way to escape.
He pried loose her fingers again, but this time he caught hold of one slim wrist, then the other one—he held them both in one hand, stroked her soft hair with the other, then stooped and kissed her, a long sweet kiss. When he straightened up and released her hands she smiled at him, but when he turned and walked away she did not follow after him. He turned and looked back from some little distance. She had rejoined the dance. The moving figures seemed misshapen, almost unhuman, as the firelight cast their long shadows against the walls.
The streets were lonely, dark, and silent, all the long ways that led back to his boat on the empty beach. He prayed that the fugitive would be gone, gone to a place of safety, away from him and his.
His prayer went unanswered, as he knew it would be. The girl lay as before, scarcely breathing, a sleep like the sleep of death. She did not wake, or even move, as he dragged her from beneath his boat. He gathered her into his arms—a light weight, and much of that lay in her heavy robe, sodden with sea water—and carried her up the steep cliff path.
Nothing but boldness would answer. He knelt at the top of the cliff, scanning