Even now, the nauseating canine was sniffing around Green's quivering hide in the hope of putting the fear of the devil in him. At that moment the Earthman resolved that, come the headsman's ax, rack, wheel, or other hellish tortures, he was going to kill that hound. It was just after he made that vow that the Duchess caused him to forget altogether the beast. "Dear," said Zuni, interrupting the Duke in the midst of his conversation with a merchant-captain, "what is this I hear about two men who have fallen from the sky in a great ship of iron?" Green quivered, and he held his breath as he waited for the Duke's reply. The Duke, a short, dark many-chinned man with white hair and very thick bristly salt-and-pepper eyebrows, frowned. "Men? Demons, rather! Can men fly in an iron ship through the air? These two claimed to have come from the stars, and you know what that means. Remember Oixrotl's prophecy: _A demon will come, claiming to be an angel_. No doubt about these two! Just to show you their subtlety, they claim to be neither demon nor angels, but men! Now, there's devilish clever thinking. Confusing to anybody but the most clear-headed. I'm glad the King of Estorya wasn't taken in." Eagerly Zuni leaned forward, her large brown eyes bright, and her red-painted mouth open and wet. "Oh, has he burned them already? What a shame! I should think he'd at least torture them for a while." Miran, the merchant-captain, said, "Your pardon, gracious lady, but the King of Estorya has done no such thing. The Estoryan law demands that all suspected demons should be kept in prison for two years. Everybody knows that a devil can't keep his human disguise more than two years. At the end of that time he reverts to his natural flesh and form, a hideous sight to behold, blasphemous, repulsive, soul-shaking." Miran rolled his one good eye so that only the white showed and made the sign to ward off evil, the index finger held rigidly out from a clenched fist. Jugkaxtr, the household priest, dived under the table, where he crouched praying, secure in the knowledge that demons couldn't touch him while he knelt beneath the thrice-blessed wood. The Duke swallowed a whole glass of wine, apparently to calm his nerves, and belched. Miran wiped his face and said, "Of course, I wasn't able to find out much, because we merchants are regarded with deep suspicion and scarcely dare to move outside the harbor or the marketplace. The Estoryans worship a female deity--ridiculous, isn't it?--and eat fish. They hate us Tropatians because we worship Zaxropatr, Male of Males, and because they must depend on us to bring them fish. But they aren't close-mouthed. They babble on and on to us, especially when one has given them wine for nothing." Green finally released his breath in a sigh of relief. How glad he was that he had never told these people his true origin! So far as they knew he was merely one of the many slaves who came from a distant country in the North.