Padmak Oleru breathed shallowly through the filter over his mouth and nose. His braids were bound back, his head covered by a kerchief, and he wore gloves. His shoes were covered with white waxed canvas spats. Carefully, as if he were unwrapping a virgin (which he was), he removed the veil from the thirty-eighth female starburst plant he had pollinated that morning. He misted its flowers to help the pollen to stick, then coated each of the silver centers of the blue trumpets with a tiny brush dipped in a container of black granules. Replacing brush and bottle in the front pocket of his apron, Padmak once again sealed the plant in the fine-meshed cloth that protected it from wild male seed. Then he moved down the shelf to visit her sister. His lower back ached. He was too tall to be bending over this many plants in one day, but he wanted to finish this row before he took a break for lunch. Thanks to the expensive filter, he was not affected by the intoxicating aura of the starburst's flowers. But it would not do to become tired and clumsy.

The majority of his plants were in another, much larger greenhouse, and would not be pollinated. The lack of fertilization would encourage them to produce the maximum amount of sticky starlight, a drug so powerful that it could quiet the pain of a woman in childbirth or bring peace to a madman. Padmak hoped the hybrids he was creating here would increase yields, just as his previous breeding attempts had done. But his main goal was to produce a variant of starburst that had resistance to stinkrot. The pollen he was using came from a quarantined batch of plants that he'd deliberately exposed to the pest. The ones that had not died contributed their essence to his experiment.

Touching the thin cloth, Padmak told himself, I will not think about Qin Jong. There is no one named Qin Jong, Eldest Daughter Fire Horse. There is only Small Quiet Concubine, and she belongs to the headman of Tender Sticky Rice village. I will never touch her flower the way I so gently bring new life to this lovely plant. And even if she could be mine, she would not want me. When my parents and the whole village died, and I walked far away to a place where no one knew the generation that bore me, who knew that I was wearing my sandals out to go from one grief to another? Why was I ever born, if I cannot be as other men and enjoy the pleasure of a wife who gets happily fat and gives me many children? Who will take care of what I have built here when I die? I have so much love inside of me, but I will never see my own face looking back at me in the face of a son. Or a daughter.

He stopped and looked at the plant he had undraped. His hand looked like an alien object or a strange animal. It had nothing to do with him. Padmak shook his head, trying to dispel this weird sensation of dislocation. It was only his hand in a glove. Then he looked at the last plant, which seemed equally unearthly. Had he pollinated all of the flowers it bore, none of them, or done them twice? Sighing, he took a loupe out of his apron and inspected each blue trumpet in turn. The center of each one glittered with small black dots. His reverie had not affected the task his hands knew they had to do.

One more green girl to go. Padmak touched the edge of its cloth, and sang:

Since love for you
Descended upon me
Like a rough piece of the finest jade
Thrown into an abandoned well,
I know that men do not live
To seek their own happiness.

It was the first verse of a song you could hear in any hostel or pub in the Northern Province of the Black Earth, Home of a Thousand Serene Rivers. But only one person knew that he had written it. The danger was too great. Qin Jong's husband must never know another man loved her. As a mere concubine, her life was already hard enough. Each night, alone in his room, Padmak would write his love-poems to her and set them to music. Once a year, twice a year, his friend Lon Ming would visit, and persuade Padmak to share his songs. The plaintive music of Padmak's hopeless love had made Lon Ming one of the most popular musicians in the province.

A chime was rung outside the greenhouse door. It was a pleasant sound, meant to alert anyone inside without startling them, but Padmak jumped anyway. "Coming!" he called testily, hurrying through the tedious process of shrouding the starburst. "Don't open the door!"

The housekeeper, Zillah Dorch, was there, looking scandalized. She was an aboriginal woman, only four feet tall, with coppery red skin, a supercilious nose like an obsidian knife, and coarse, curly black hair that she kept trimmed close to her skull. As an infant, the shape of her head had been altered according to the way of her people, so her forehead sloped sharply back, giving her face a dramatic and aristocratic look. She was younger than Padmak by at least a decade, yet contrived to look like a severe elderly woman. "This one knows better than to open the door of the greenhouse, boss," she scolded, looking respectfully at her own big toe. Padmak sighed. Would he have to straighten out another battle with the laundress? Being wealthy brought troubles into his house that he had not anticipated.

"Someone is here," Zillah hissed. "I have brought her inside and put her behind a screen, to protect your good name." She nodded in approval of her own great good sense, making her large, heavy lapis-and-gold earrings bob in her extended lobes. Some aborigine women stretched their ears until the thick spools of precious metal they wore in them touched their shoulders. Padmak was grateful that Zillah was no slave to that particular fashion. However, she was wearing (as usual) a liopard-print dress, as if to warn the casual observer not to assume that she had been civilized, and a kitchen cleaver hung from her belt next to all of her keys.

A woman had come calling? Unescorted? How very strange. Padmak followed the housekeeper into his dwelling, wondering if he should take off his apron. The sound of running water greeted them. In summertime, the large house was cooled by a system of artificial brooks, well-stocked with the colorful fish that Padmak loved to feed by hand. But it was winter now, and he repeatedly sampled the water with the tips of his fingers as they went by, to make sure it was being kept at the proper temperature. As they went down the hallway, his eyes were cheered by a painting here and a sculpture there, beautiful things that soothed his unhappy heart.

Belatedly, he thought, Yes, lose the apron, you clod, and shoved the filter and protective garment at Zillah when she showed him the door that hid their visitor. Needing a little time to calm himself, Padmak called for hot water and a mirror, so he could wash his face and put his braids in order. The mirror showed him a man with not much hair on his chin, an oval face with skin the color of yellow tea flavored with brown spice. His black eyes were crimped at the outer edges, and his mouth was also crimped in an expression of disapproval. Did he always look like that? What an ugly crease it made between his eyes.

Padmak shook out the big plum-colored blouse he was wearing and removed his gloves and spats. He dusted off the thighs of his loose black trousers and made sure they were tied snugly around his ankles. He tried to relax his lips and cheeks so that he would have a more pleasant aspect. Then he pushed the door of the anteroom open and went in, calling over his shoulder for sliced peaches, steamed soybeans, and cold water. The least he could do was feed his unexpected guest. Then he inhaled, and he knew who had come to see him. "Wife of my neighbor," he said, careful to sound neutral, "I receive you with honor."

"Husband's neighbor," said Qin Jong, "you give me more honor than a poor concubine is entitled to receive. I have been sent to you with good news." She did not, however, sound very happy. She was wearing an essential oil distilled from flowers and herbs that were said to promote serenity and long life. It came back to him along with the unique perfume of her body, like precious green wine carried in a warm shell. The perfume was one he had compounded for her, presented to the headman along with more ostentatious gifts for his two primary wives. "Perhaps some other person in your household would have a use for this humble experiment of mine, though it did not turn out as well as I had hoped," Padmak had said. That had been long ago, when the deed to this land was signed in the town's great book of titles. He was so glad the vial had not wound up in some other woman's hands.

She has left him! This renegade thought sprang past his defenses, and Padmak murdered it with a scowl.

"Do not be angry!" Qin Jong begged. Padmak knotted his fists in rage that one so fragile, kind, and beautiful had been taught to cringe from a man. Luckily, the refreshments arrived, and the young female servant carried a tray around the screen to their guest, where she could eat and drink in decency. Padmak made a pretense of partaking, but it was a great relief when the maid cleaned his hands and took all the dishes back to the kitchen.

"Noble Padmak," Qin Jong said, "you have won the lottery. You are to leave at once, to travel to the capital to celebrate the King's Jubilee. My esteemed husband, Headman Ri Jong, has sent me to take over the administration of your affairs while you are absent. If the services of one so unworthy could be of any use to my husband's beloved neighbor, who is like a brother to him."

Qin Jong was the oldest daughter of one of the most prosperous growers in the country of Lanchin. Country women were not as well-protected as urban ladies. There was too much work to do for half of the population to be idle. As a mere concubine, she was expected to keep busy, and rather than have her in the house with his jealous wives, Ri Jong had given her a position overseeing his own greenhouses, which specialized in a miniature tree that bore two kinds of aromatic fruit. The trees were prized by bird watchers because they attracted a particularly colorful, tiny hoverdart whose powerful wings made a pleasant sound, much like the hum uttered by a woman in the first stirrings of arousal. If anyone in the village was competent to oversee Padmak's operations, it was her.

But what a cruel joke! To have his beloved, eating and sleeping under his roof, while he left her hundreds of miles behind! Not for the first time, Padmak wondered if Ri Jong had shrewdly divined his passion for this woman, and entertained himself by tantalizing maneuvers such as this one, calculated to remind Padmak that he could never have what his soul was starving to consume.

Then he realized Small Quiet Concubine would be waiting for an answer. "I am deeply grateful to Ri Jong for his consideration of my welfare," he replied. "I will instruct my staff to make you comfortable during your stay, and give you authority over them." But before he could go to the door, she spoke to him in a different tone of voice, a personal message of such bitterness that Padmak was struck dumb.

"You know why Ri Jong took a third wife, don't you? It's because his official wives had no children. He thought to give himself a peaceful household by marrying two women who were best friends. Little did he know they had made a pact with one another to never become rivals, so neither of them would allow herself to conceive a child that might give one of them precedence over the other. But within three months of my arrival in his house, both of them announced impending births. And so the proper rites for my marriage were never completed. Yet I could not be sent home, for my father would have been humiliated and become Ri Jong's enemy. So I remained as a concubine, disgraced. Now Ri Jong has two legitimate sons, and I will never be allowed to have a child of my own. I am known in his house as the unfortunate one. Even the servants shun me. Why was I born?"

She echoed the question Padmak had asked himself less than an hour ago. It came to him that if he went to the screen and put out his hand, Qin Jong would take it. She would accept his love, and it would be like the single rain in a decade that makes the Shai Desert bloom. He wanted her. His body was drawn to her the way any healthy young man's body responded to a comely woman. The fact that he also loved her made his desire painfully intense.

She need not know his secret. The walls in his house were thick. No one would hear what transpired here. She would take no hurt from him, nothing that could disgrace her later. Padmak went to the door, but instead of summoning Zillah and the rest of his staff, he threw the bolt across it. From behind the screen, Qin Jong must see what he had done. Yet she made no sound of protest. More frightened than he had ever been in his life, Padmak walked slowly to one side of the three heavy panels of carved wood. He barely noticed its depiction of the Intercessor Iset. She had just turned away from her dying husband to shed tears of compassion for the suffering of the entire world.

Before he could raise his arm, Qin Jong put out her hand and drew him behind the screen, into her arms. They made love in a state of confusion, sometimes frenzied, sometimes achingly slow. They wept, and kissed away each other's tears. Neither of them could utter a complete sentence, and they interrupted each other, then bade the other be silent. He loosened her clothing as he had dreamed a thousand and one lonely nights, and stretched out beside her in the nest of brocade cushions behind the screen. Everything about her was perfect. Her upturned breasts were small and firm, the nipples brown as sparrows. Her skin was a little paler than his own, smoother, smooth as talc. He turned to face her and loved her body with his hands and mouth, bringing her hips up to the sky again and again. Touching her made him feel clean and alert. He was careful not to hurt her or disturb the proof of her maidenhood, but he could not resist entering her with his fingers, going as far inside her as he could without jeopardizing her good name. She told him that she did not care, that she wanted him to possess her completely, and reached for his manhood. "I cannot," he told her, trapping her hand in his own before she could give him that intimate caress.

Padmak was afraid she would deride him, accuse him of being impotent or cowardly. Instead, Qin Jong stared up at his face and said in wonder, "You really do love me, don't you?"

"Yes," he told her, gathering her tightly into his arms, as if crushing her would prove the truth of his words.

Qin Jong removed the last of her clothing and put their faces together, and used her tongue to silence his moans. Her small hand plucked at his large paw and placed it again between her thighs. "Let us enjoy what we can without danger," she whispered. With his index finger, Padmak traced the cross that divided her inner lips. The four petals were rigid with excitement, but not immovable. He carefully separated them, once more finding their sensitive inner surfaces. Gentle stroking with a crooked finger was enough to give her ecstasy. But if he applied too much pressure or went in too deep, the flower would bloom permanently. Backturned petals would announce that she had been violated. What was wrong with Ri Jong, that he could deny himself the heady sensation of ripening a green girl into full womanhood?

The burr of his sex fit nicely in the hollow of her right hip. Daring to ease two of his fingers inside her and with one of her legs between his own, keeping her knees apart with his thigh, Padmak teased both of them into such a state that they peaked together, mouth to mouth, swallowing each other's cries of delight. The sudden pain of knowing they must part, after joining together in such a lover's paradise, was shocking to them both. It had not occurred to either of them that tasting, holding, touching, and mingling with one another would bring them even more agony than deprivation. Padmak brought Qin's face to his neck and urged her to bite him harder, harder still, till he was sure her teeth had marked his flesh. He needed some concrete reminder of her presence beneath his body, something that would endure when the salty musk of her had faded from his hands.

But no more time could be stolen from their other lives. She put her clothing in order alone behind the screen that had witnessed them eagerly flouting its purpose. Padmak summoned the housekeeper and told her that Qin Jong would be in charge during his absence. Zillah smiled and went to order her master's manservant to pack his things. Padmak had bought her from a slave dealer who was headed for the copper mines. She was ten, and would not have lived to be thirteen in the pits. There was no particular reason for him to select her, other than her youth. He had shown mercy. She had a nose that worked as well as his, and knew immediately that the room had been used for the game of Two Tigraffes Forgetting to Cross the River. Padmak had allowed her to marry another man's servant, a widower with three small children. The boss had purchased his contract along with his children from another farmer and brought all of them to live under his roof without complaining about the noise that the children made or the extra food they would eat before they got big enough to do any work.

Padmak's secret and Qin Jong's life were safe in the keeping of Zillah Dorch, who had contempt for the yellow folks' odd ideas about taking two wives at once, usually without consulting the women's wishes. Her own people had a proverb: "One woman is a puzzle a man may never solve. Two women are a maze with quicksand at its heart."

Zillah knew another secret about Padmak as well. But it would have killed him to know that something which gave him so much shame only made him seem more courageous to his housekeeper. So she pretended to be ignorant, as did the manservant who cared for his clothing, changed his bedding, and drew his bath, and the little girl who tended the house serpent and cleaned the privies. This house was a sanctuary of goodness and compassion in a harsh land. All who worked here cherished their peculiar master.

Now Padmak must leave this remote area, far from the blight of Fokus and King Ursus, the fatally-wounded monarch who would not die. He must leave the flourishing, fertile green of the countryside, travel to the sick heart of the First World, and celebrate half a century of rule by a monarch who could not return the land--or himself--to health. Zillah sent word to the stable to have a wagon brought up to carry Padmak's luggage to the river docks, where he could take a fast steam ship to the capital. Most rich men would not travel without a retinue, but she doubted Padmak had even thought to take one servant along. So she summoned Yuri Ben, the valet, and told him to prepare for the journey. Yuri was handy with all manner of sharp objects, and was as coldly practical as Padmak was a dreamer. If anyone could get her boss to Fokus and home again in one piece, red-skinned Yuri Ben was the man.

But neither Padmak nor Yuri would think about food for such a journey. So Zillah went to the kitchen to consult with her husband, the cook. Between the two of them, they got a compact camp stove, cups, bowls, utensils, and a good store of food into two crates. There was rice, dried sheets of flavorful seaweed, powdered soup, smoked fish, sesame seeds, cooking oil, sour sauce, sweet sauce, black salt, opichi rind, salt pork, tea, sugar, pickled ginger, garlic, apple-onions, porridge grass, candied chicken feet, and a few other staples. After a brief argument about what injuries or illnesses the pair were likely to encounter between Lanchin and Fokus, they packed a third, much smaller crate with first aid supplies and medicines, insect repellent, tablets for purifying water, and sunblock.

Other servants carried the boxes out to the front gate, where everyone assembled to congratulate Padmak on his lucky token and take an oath of loyalty to Qin Jong. She appeared beneath a parasol with fringes long enough to hide her body to the knees, so that no one could say she had been immodest. Crates were stowed in the bed of the wagon, softer bundles of bedding and clothing went on top of that, and Padmak was tucked in alongside Yuri for the bumpy two days' ride. Pulling the wagon was Lork, the draylizard. Lork had huge shoulders and muscular legs, and a rill behind his neckless head that made it possible to attach a harness to him. He was motivated to pull the wagon by a driver who carried a whip that made an unpleasant noise (although it would not have made any impression at all against his thick graygreen hide), and by the fact that he needed to stay in motion to keep the wagon from running over his tail. In addition to pulling the wagon, he came in handy when it was time to camp for the night. With Lork around, there would be no troublesome insects. However, he grumbled loudly as he walked, which could make conversation difficult, and he tended to be flatulent, no matter what he was fed, which gave rise to many jokes about travelers who tried to put their carts before their draylizards.

"Smile so that his last image of you will be of your happiness," Zillah told Qin Jong. The housekeeper parted the fringes of the parasol with her cane, so that Padmak could catch a final glimpse of his sweetheart. The rest of the household discreetly ignored this breach in protocol, secretly thrilled to be part of a conspiracy. When the cart lurched out of view, Zillah said, "Come inside now," and took Qin Jong through the gate. "Tell them they are to work for one more hour, then take an early break for dinner," she whispered. Qin Jong repeated the order, then Zillah's oldest stepdaughter came to show her to her room and organize it according to her requirements.

"Blessings on you, mother," Qin Jong said faintly before she went away, and Zillah smiled. The two of them would keep Padmak's business in fine running order while he was away. She would not worry about him. After the Jubilee, he would be coming home. Time enough then to worry about what could be done about his lover.

What sort of world was it when a rich, free, yellow man could not have the woman he loved, and a red-skinned slave could sleep each night with a kind-hearted, lusty man whose fluffy, thick white beard blew about when he snored? Freedom is not an easy thing to understand, Zillah thought, much less possess.

Freedom was also on the mind of Mustela Frenata--the freedom she hoped to win for her mentor, and the freedom she would surely lose if any of Minister Chop's underlings intercepted her. A dramatic climb up the castle walls under cover of darkness had a certain melodramatic appeal, but Mustela had second thoughts--to wit, that she was not as young as she used to be, and it was unlikely that she would survive a fall from such a height if detected and shot.

After obtaining proof that Sook Abin did indeed possess the information she required, Mustela did not return to her customary sleeping place. She had learned early on that it was best to have no fixed abode. She had friends all over the city who would not be surprised or offended to find she had let herself in to their rooms and was sleeping on the largest half of their bed. She had clothing, tools, and money stashed at all of these places, and a few more that had nothing to do with eiderdown alliances. She bought a fish sandwich from a vendor and wandered into the park to eat it. A few moments later, she was up a ladder of trees, concealed in the hollow of a lightning-struck branch, buried in a pile of its thick, soft, gigantic dead leaves. She slept deep and fast, a concentrated form of slumber that would leave her alert and refreshed.

She woke before sunset. The bodies of the condemned heretics would be thrown into towering bonfires as soon as enough darkness gathered to make it a dramatic spectacle. It seemed the whole city was in attendance, so it was a simple matter to walk through a public shower, duck into a hidey-hole where white clothes could be exchanged for a simple disguise, and sort out a lightweight bag of equipment. She carried the map in her head and grabbed some birdcow jerky to eat on her way to Minister Chop's misogynist prison.

Men who became public figures, in Mustela's opinion, cared far too much for the trappings of power. They must do things on a big scale and catch the public eye. Consequently, their security arrangements were slipshod. There were always any number of well-built guards marching about in splendid uniforms. But their movements were predictable, their maneuvers choreographed to impress visitors rather than survey each potential point of entry. Minister Chop thought he ought to be king, and every detail of his residence announced those pretensions.

Important men were too busy to care for their own possessions, so they needed lots of servants. These people needed access to every part of the mansion, no matter how private, so they could provide victuals, take away offal, clean, and carry messages. And so a hidden system of entrances and privilege to use them existed side-by-side the official system of checking in with the guards and getting a pass and an escort. Bath water could, after all, get cold while a maid waited to be searched.

Why sneak about and look for a back way into the castle when dozens of people walked comfortably right in the front gate every day? Once inside, she need only walk about with an air of complete confidence to enter the harem with impunity--or so she hoped. Mustela put on the pink-striped robe of the eunuch and got in line along with other early-morning tradesmen and women. There was a baker with an insulated cart full of hot frosted sweetbread, a florist, a knife-grinder, two women with bundles of clean linen balanced on their heads, vendors of fish and vegetables and eggs and milk, and several carts of firewood and coal. Thanks to her height, she would pass very well for a eunuch. When they were not attached to great houses, these unfortunate geldings often made a living as couriers or workmen, since there was no place in a household where they could not be safely sent. She pushed a barrow with a large crate in it. The crate bore the chop of one of the city's busiest metalworkers, and another chop from the city's medical authority. It would look like one of the Minister's new entertainments for the seraglio.

The line moved fairly quickly, probably because the guards already knew most of the people who were dropping off goods here, and didn't see any reason to slow down the castle's morning routine. They detained Mustela briefly, one of them asking, "What's in there?" These doughty men-at-arms were garbed in imperial purple, with black trimming instead of Ursus's brown. The nerve of Minister Chop! He probably had a throne in his dining hall that was exactly one inch shorter than the King's ceremonial seat.

"I'm sure I don't know," she said frostily, pitching her voice a little higher than normal. "I am only instructed to leave it in room number five of the harem. I believe the minister has someone on staff who will install it."

"We weren't told anything about this," another guard demurred.

"Fine," Mustela shrugged, and turned the barrow around. "I'll just have to come back tomorrow, but I don't mind getting paid twice for the same job. And I'm sure the minister will appreciate your attention to protocol."

The guards exchanged uneasy looks. Minister Chop was not at all reasonable about any delays when he was in the mood for a visit to the seraglio. He would want immediate access to this new toy, whatever its disgusting purpose might be. He was also a notorious penny pincher.

"Through there," one guard said curtly, indicating a branch off the main hallway. "Don't know how you'll get it up the stairs though."

"I'll manage," Mustela grunted, and manhandled the barrow out of their sight.

When she got to the stairs, she tipped the barrow up and left it resting flat against the wall. Getting the crate up the stairs should be easy, since it contained nothing but a bottle of water and a coil of thin, strong rope. She threw a leather strap around it, boosted it to her shoulders, and tucked the strap around her forehead. It was a long climb, and the crate had sharp corners that bit into her kidneys and the palms of her hands. Then she took another trip back down the stairs to retrieve the wheelbarrow. It was an awkward thing to wrench up the stairs, and she barked her ankle against it twice.

Consequently, when she came face to face with the pair of knitting grannies who guarded the door of the harem, she was out of breath and temper. "Uh--uh--uh," one of them scolded, shaking his index finger. "Just park your hams right there, sonny, and explain your business." He continued to work on a pink-and-white sweater while he upbraided her, apparently having no need to look at his own work or count the stitches to make sure the pattern came out properly.

"Delivery," Mustela wheezed. "Minister. Special order. Room five." She did not have to pretend to be out of breath.

"Do I know you?" asked the other eunuch, looking up from the cuff of a matching slipper. He had extra knitting needles of various lengths and widths stuck in his snow-white topknot. "Perky, do you know this gelding?"

Perky shook his head and introduced a third needle into what looked like the back of the sweater. "No, Lovey, not me. And you know I never forget a face." He impatiently flicked his hand at a few pale hairs that had wandered out of his topknot and into his eyes. Unlike Lovey, he had a thin yellowish mustache whose edges dangled below his chin.

Lovey swung back to the sweating and silently cursing Mustela Frenata. "I don't think I've seen you make a delivery before. What's your name, boy? Where were you cut? Who pruned you? I think I'll have to search you."

Oh, so that was it. Rank hath its privileges, even if it was only feeling up stray visitors. Mustela shrugged as best she could with a wooden box on her shoulders. "So search me, grandmother, I'm in a hurry to pick up my next order."

The eunuch's lovely pink mouth curved up in a smile that must have been quite provocative when he was a lad. "You understand, I'm just doing my duty," he said apologetically, and slid his hands over Mustela's body. She stood still enough for the inspection, which actually felt rather nice. No tickling. Her breasts were smaller than Lovey's own. She wasn't prepared to have him actually grope at the cloth between her legs, but she didn't flinch, either. So why had he turned pale?

"Oh, you poor dear," Lovey said, "they took everything, didn't they?"

"Nooooo," said Perky, looking over from his sweater, his eyebrows raised to indicate that he was shocked and perturbed. "At least my goose still has a neck that I can make water through. Taking the whole bird is illegal here, you know. Hardly anybody survives such a radical procedure. You are the beloved of Herself, aren't you?"

"The goddess has been very good to me," Mustela muttered, but she was thinking of Divine Lady Ferret-Among-the-Stars, not the eunuch's knife-wielding Mother Red Teeth.

"Go in, go in," Lovey said, waving at the door. "Here, we'll pry it open for you, although we're not as young as we used to be, are we, Perky?"

"Speak for yourself," Perky sniffed, grasping one of the door's brass handles. "I'm right as rain."

"Unless it happens to actually rain," Lovey said with exasperated fondness. "Then you can't get out of bed on your own, you old coot."

"Guess I know better than to weed the garden all day Saturday and then discover I can't straighten my spine out," Perky reminded his friend.

"What sort of foolish person can you be jawing about?" Lovey laughed, and waved Mustela through the open door. She hastened to obey.

"I might be a while," she said apologetically. "I have to put this thing together and bolt it--" "Please!" Perky said, shuddering. He let go of his half of the door to clasp his hands in front of his heart.

"The less said about that, the better," Lovey stage-whispered. "Do what you must, youngster. There's a mid-morning snack, you know. I'll have them leave an extra tray outside the door. You don't mind if I don't send the girl inside, do you? It upsets the little ones. They don't understand the Minister's more sophisticated preoccupations."

"As if you do?" Perky snorted.

"Oh, shut up. I swung a mean bastinado in my youth, I did. Taught many a young bride there were worse things than chewing on an old man's gristle." This sounded like one of Lovey's fonder memories. "There's more to being a princess than taffy pulls and playing hide-the-candle, you know."

"I don't mind at all," Mustela grunted, and wrestled the no-longer-light-seeming crate down the hall, wondering how many more steps it would be to the apparently notorious room number five.

"Or slicing the pomegranate four ways," Perky said slyly, and both grannies went off into high silver peals of lewd laughter. What dirty girlies they were, Mustela thought, and turned a corner.

Most harems featured an open-air central courtyard with a pool. The women's rooms were grouped around this social area. But Minister Chop apparently did not want much fraternizing between his captive brides. In the plans she had memorized, each prisoner had her own two-room suite. Larger areas were available for group recreation, but access to them was not generally available.

Mustela counted doors and turns in the corridor. Everything was painted the same pukey color, and there were no identifying marks on the rooms. Someone who was already disoriented by pain, hunger, or rape would be hard-pressed to know where they were being taken. But Mustela had an excellent head for directions. Limber should be up ahead on the left.

She hissed when she saw the lock upon the door. It wasn't that it would try her abilities as a pick. No, the door was secured with a simple hasp that had a long bolt driven through it. What a mark of contempt for the crafty inhabitants of these rooms, who had prided themselves on being able to go anywhere that larceny called them.

Mustela drew the bolt from the latch and opened the door. Within was darkness and the closed-in smell of a sick room. Was Limber a hostage in some more specialized section of this awful place? Then she heard labored breathing and turned to face its source, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Limber lay on a narrow bed with stained sheets. She was snoring like a drunk sleeping off a bender. Mustela's heart lurched when she saw a basin of water and rolls of bandages on a bedside table. Had Minister Chop already maimed her mother in roguery? She wanted to throw up when she remembered the little doll with the amputated leg that she'd seen in Sook Abin's model of the harem.

Mustela forced herself to get closer to the bed. With cold fingers, swallowing a nauseating lump in her throat, she drew the thin coverlet off Limber's body. And found that she was indeed crippled, but not an amputee. Both feet were bandaged and swollen, but it appeared to Mustela's practiced eye that the bones had only been shattered. (Only!) Minister Chop apparently liked to prolong the ceremony of mutilation, taking health and independence away from his victims a little at a time.

"What the Third Hell of Brion are you doing here?"

Mustela jumped back at least a foot. Limber had suddenly returned to consciousness, and was rubbing at her crusty eyes. "I've come to save you," she squeaked.

Limber rolled her eyes. "So I've come to this," she said sourly. "The worst of my many ungrateful, knuckle-headed, thick-fingered, birdcow-footed students has walked straight into the mouth of a monster to carry me off like a mewling kitten in its mama's mouth. How pathetic."

"It's nice to see you, too," Mustela said, handing Limber a cup of water. The elderly thief lifted herself up on one elbow, studiously avoiding looking at her own feet, and snatched it. Limber drank noisily, spilling water on herself and the bed without seeming to notice. Then she thrust the cup at Mustela and let go of it before the other woman had quite gotten her hand around it.

"Don't go back to sleep!" Mustela begged, alarmed by Limber's pallor.

"What am I supposed to stay awake for? You think I want to watch when they come to carry you away to the operating room?"

"Dammit, Limber, don't tell me you are too proud to let me rescue you."

"Rescue me?! Rescue. Humpharumph. And how did you plan to do that, tadpole brain?"

"I am going to put you in a box and take you out the same way I got in," Mustela said. "I'm a delivery eunuch, don't you know. Fetters and racks, our specialty."

Limber seemed to take in her disguise for the first time. "Well, you're ugly enough to be a capon," she admitted. Mustela went to bring the crate and barrow into the room, afraid she would lose her temper. When she got back, Limber had straightened into a sitting position and was punching a pillow with savage force. "I'm not going," she told Mustela.

"You stubborn, stupid, perverse and senile old scold! You are leaving this place if I have to gag and hog-tie you myself."

Limber shook her head. Her uncombed, matted gray hair gave her a humorous-looking cock's-comb that Mustela dared not laugh at. "Not leaving without the others," she said, and locked her lips tight over her long, slightly yellow teeth.

Mustela saw that she meant it. "Ferret poop," she said.

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