Flaith was a breath in a man's throat and a catch at his guts, lovely in bronze moire, her amber shoulders bared to the curve of her breasts, the moire slashed teasingly down a naked side to the swell of a white hip. She leaned on the wooden tabletop, and her slant eyes were clear, and her crimson hair a flame caught in the blaze of a wall torch. The McCanahan let his eyes linger on her loveliness, but it was the little dark man, with the scar across half his face and a full foaming tankard at his mouth, that he had come to see. He drew back his arm and threw the pebble he held. Ars Maasen felt the sting of the rock on his forehead. He lowered his mug and swore by a dozen gods at the ill manners of men who would toss rocks in the middle of such a song. And then he felt Flaith's white fingers, and the dig of her long red nails in his forearm. "It's Kael!" she whispered. "He's naked and alone!" "For shame! A fine boy like that and--" "Hssst, you byblow fool!" she warned. "Go to him and see what he needs!" She pressed the key to her dressing room into his hand, and when he had slipped through the men and women toward the door, she stood so the others could see her. On tiny golden feet she climbed from chair to tabletop, and her bare arms were amber serpents writhing in the crimson half-light. "The Snakes of Slaamsheel," she called to the players, and a roar of delight went up, for this was an old ballad, and the flame-like Flaith dancing with skirt to mid-thighs across the tabletops, set the blood bubbling in a man's veins. The McCanahan caught the fire of her throaty singing just as Ars Maasen whipped the cloak off his shoulders and flung it about his chest. "A full belly, is it?" the dark little man asked. "Wine or Puban ale or maybe both?" "I'm sober as the snakes Flaith sings of, and as mean!" Ars Maasen caught the madness in his voice, and grunted, "Come quickly, then. This way, across the sill and through the alley to her doorway!" When they were moving into the shadows of the alley, Kael told him of his father's death, and of the orders of the High Mor that made him lower than a Tuuran-peddler. And as the words came through his teeth, the raw fury that twisted him showed in his eyes. "They blasted him without a chance for a fight--the way they tried to blast me! Now they're hunting me for a reason only the Shee fairies could know!" "Easy, boy. Easy! Talk as you want--it helps ease the pain under your navel. But don't let the hate shake you so. It blinds a man." The little trader turned the key in the lock and the stout wooden door opened inward to a tiny room where an oil lamp cast a dim yellow glare on a dressing table and stool. Costumes hung from a peg-rack on the wall above a tycat-skin couch. "Flaith's room," he muttered. "Only she comes here."