The lodging assigned was in a room over the shop of a tailor named Gualdis, at a corner where three streets ran together. The man had a fat wife and three daughters, one of whom brought from a cookshop on the corner a big dish of lentils and greens with bits of sausage through it, from which they all ate together. The girls chartered profusely, curious as so many magpies about Rodvard and how life was lived in Dossola, for they were too young to remember when Prince Pavinius had turned from Grand Governor to Prophet and the Tritulaccan war began. Rodvard liked the middle one best; called Leece. She had thick and vividly black eyebrows that gave her eyes a sparkle when she laughed, which was frequently. (The Blue Star told him that behind the sparkle crouched a kind of dumb question whether he might not be the destined man, and the thought of being sought by her was not unpleasant to him, but she turned her head so rapidly and talked so much that he could make out no more.) After he had been shown to his bed, the usual sleeplessness of a changed condition of life came to him, and he began to examine his thoughts. He felt happy beneath all, and doubting whether he were entitled to, searched for some background of the sense of approaching peril which had held him the night Lalette came to his pensionnario door, and again when he spoke with Tuolén the butler. But it was nowhere; all seemed well in spite of the fact that he was more or less a prisoner in this land. The common report had it that this was not an unusual experience, that Amorosian agents circulated all through the homeland, recruiting for their own purposes especially those with any touch of witchery, and he thought that might be true. The Initiate on the ship had taken him very readily into protection, and if he were like those in the court, must have known that Rodvard bore a Blue Star. Yet it seemed to him that these Amorosians were so well disposed toward each other that one might do worse to live out a life among them, in spite of a certain unearthliness among their Initiates. Now also he began to look back toward Dossola and to understand why it was that Mancherei should be so hated, most particularly by the upper orders. For it seemed that if he could but return, persuade Remigorius, Mathurin and the rest how the people of the Prophet lived among themselves, the Sons of the New Day might fulfill their mission by striking an alliance in Mancherei. No, never (he answered himself); that would be to set the son above the parent, the colony over the homeland, and politic would never permit it.